Something Is Wrong With This Cockroach

This wasp makes zombies. Two stings, one to the chest and one up through the throat into the brain, and a cockroach twice her size stops wanting to walk. She leads it away by its antenna like a dog on a leash, and it becomes a living nursery for her larva. But some cockroaches fight back. In this animated nature documentary we follow the emerald jewel wasp and the American cockroach: how she finds the brain with a stinger that can feel, what her venom does to the roach, why it follows her into a burrow, what happens inside that burrow, and what Kenneth Catania's high speed films at Vanderbilt showed about the roaches that got away: watch her, stand tall, protect the throat, and kick her in the head. ⏱ Chapters 0:00 Something is wrong with this cockroach 0:32 The hunter arrives 2:24 The stings 4:37 The leash 6:21 Inside the burrow 8:21 The stance 9:36 The kick 10:56 Who loses 12:03 The ones that walked away 📚 Sources (checked September 2026) • How Not to Be Turned into a Zombie: Catania 2018, Brain, Behavior and Evolution: https://doi.org/10.1159/000490341 • Getting the Most Out of Your Zombie: Catania 2020, Brain, Behavior and Evolution: https://doi.org/10.1159/000511548 • The cocoon resists cannibalistic predation: Catania 2025, Brain, Behavior and Evolution: https://doi.org/10.1159/000540971 • Larvae destroy the host's respiratory system and heart first: Catania 2023, Current Biology: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2023.06.005 • The wasp introduced from New Caledonia into Hawaii: Williams 1942, Proceedings of the Hawaiian Entomological Society: https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/item... • Life history of the emerald jewel wasp: Arvidson et al. 2018, Journal of Hymenoptera Research: https://doi.org/10.3897/jhr.63.21762 • The venom and the zombie state: Gal and Libersat 2010, PLoS One: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0010019 • The stinger finds the brain by touch: Gal et al. 2014, PLoS One: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0089683 • Mind control review: Libersat, Kaiser and Emanuel 2018, Frontiers in Psychology: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00572 • The larva's antimicrobial secretions: Herzner et al. 2013, PNAS: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1213384110 and Weiss et al. 2014, PLoS One: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0098784 • Ampulex dementor: Ohl et al. 2014, PLoS One: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0095068 • Coverage of the 2018 study: Science News: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/how-ro... and Vanderbilt via ScienceDaily: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018... The wasp and the roach we follow are one illustrative story built from published research. The fight numbers come from lab arena trials with large adult roaches, where running away was not counted; the stinger and venom experiments are lab studies. Numbers are rounded. Figures are current as of September 2026. #jewelwasp #cockroach #nature