Natures wonders: zombified animals (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, January 11, 2017, 12:30 (2871 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Zombification is a very common event:
http://www.livescience.com/34196-zombie-animals.html?utm_source=ls-newsletter&utm_m...

David’s comment: Neat tricks, but there is no way these lifestyles could have developed stepwise. Especially if the system involves a third party like the starling and Pill bug. Or a zombie ant that has to find a certain leaf to clamp onto. The only answer is saltation.
dhw:Thank you for another marvellous collection. I’m happy with saltation, but I don’t know why you always think that is the “answer”. The answer to what? As I see it, what is so striking about these extraordinary lifestyles is the inventive intelligence that must have devised them. According to your interpretation of evolution, your God preprogrammed them all or personally instructed each of these parasites, because that was how he could keep life going until he produced humans (though for all we know, some of these methods may have originated after the arrival of humans). Thank God for the zombie cockroach or we wouldn’t be here! Alternatively, if we want to know how each of these extraordinary procedures came about, perhaps the “answer” is that the organisms worked things out for themselves.

DAVID: Your last sentence makes no sense. The triple system involving a starling bird, a pill bug and a parasite would require a committee meeting of the three to work.

You are confusing parasitism with symbiosis. The parasitical plagywhat’saname lives inside the starling, the pill bug eats it with the poop, the parasite zombifies the pill bug, the starling eats the pill bug, and the whole process starts all over again. There are no “committee meetings”. Only the parasite has to work out its “lifestyle”. In your other examples, this is done by the wasp, the fungus, the barnacle, and once more the wasp. In any case, what is your theory? That your God preprogrammed the first cells to pass on these processes, without which life could not continue in order to produce humans?