A parasitic wasp turns caterpillars into zombie bodyguards; they spend their final hours protecting the larvae eating them alive

A species of parasitic wasp has evolved one of the strangest survival strategies in the insect world, turning its caterpillar host into a living bodyguard for its own young. The wasp, from the genus Glyptapanteles, lays as many as 80 eggs inside a single caterpillar of the geometer moth species Thyrinteina leucocerae in one pass. About 2 weeks later, the wasp larvae burst through the caterpillar skin to pupate nearby, an injury that would normally kill most parasitised hosts outright. Instead, the caterpillar survives, stops moving entirely and stops feeding, staying rooted near the pupae for days. Its only remaining behaviour is to violently swing its head whenever a predator approaches, defending the very grubs that spent 2 weeks consuming it from within.