TED - Ed Yong: Suicidal crickets, zombie roaches and other parasite tales

TED EdYong Parasite independence index

"They're constantly inviting us to look at the natural world sideways, and to ask if the behaviors we're seeing, whether they're simple and obvious or baffling and puzzling, are not the results of individuals acting through their own accord but because they are being bent to the control of something else."

TED-2014-Yong-Parasite

• humans set a premium on our own free will and independence. 自由女神像，独立宣言，互联网时代。
• A herd of wildebeests, a shoal of fish, a flock of birds. why do these groups form? homophily: 物以类聚。
• A tapeworm is effectively a long, living gut with genitals at one end and a hooked mouth at the other. 从1毫米到15米，相当于从1块钱到1万5千块。人体的猪肉绦虫约2-3米
• The shrimp are just one step on its (tapeworm) journey. Its ultimate destination is this, the greater flamingo.燕雀安知鸿鹄之志
• They aren't sociable through their own volition, but because they are being controlled. The tapeworm hijacks their brains and their bodies, turning them into vehicles for getting itself into a flamingo.
• They are part of an entire cavalcade of
  mind-controlling parasites, of fungi, viruses, and worms and insects and more that all specialize in subverting and overriding the wills of their hosts. 《生命之源》Trials of Life, 1990, BBC纪录片。
• They're easy to overlook, but that doesn't mean that they aren't important. 泰山不让土壤故能成其大，河海不择细流故能就其深。
• Manipulation is not an oddity. They have as much control over their own fates as my car.
• Orwellian dystopias and shadowy cabals and mind-controlling supervillains -- these are tropes that fill our darkest fiction, but in nature, they happen all the time.《1984》乔治•奥威尔 (1903-1950)，在 TED-2014-Snowden-Internet 中也提到了，Big Brother老大哥？哈哈！
• Are there dark, sinister parasites that are influencing our behavior without us knowing about it, besides the NSA? 美国国家安全局又被黑，Snowden again！
• It's a classic tale of Eat, Prey, Love. 老鼠爱上猫，香烟爱上火柴？！
• dopamine, a substance involved in reward and motivation. sexual arousal.
• whether the parasite is truly influencing our behavior. this capacity to constantly subvert our way of thinking about the world makes parasites amazing.
• "On the Origin of Species," Charles Darwin writes about the grandeur of life, and of endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful. 《物种起源》，达尔文 (1809-1882)
• They're constantly inviting us to look at the natural world sideways, and to ask if the behaviors we're seeing, whether they're simple and obvious or baffling and puzzling, are not the results of individuals acting through their own accord but because they are being bent to the control of something else. 寄生虫parasite