“Mindsuckers”: How to Picture Parasites by Anand Varma

Anand Varma (website) describes the challenge of photographing parasites as they hijack host animals.

 His images appear in the "Mindsuckers" feature in the November issue of National Geographic magazine.

This stop motion video was made from the 2249 photos I took of a zombie ladybug being enslaved by a mind-controlling parasitic wasp. The wasp grows up inside the ladybug and when it is ready to transform into an adult, it crawls out and forces the ladybug to stand guard over it as it spins its cocoon. The last frame I took of this interaction was chosen for the cover of the November issue. Read about more stories like this in the magazine. See the full stop motion video with dubstep soundtrack here: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2014/11/mindsuckers/music-video Get tickets to my talk this Wednesday night in D.C. with Carl Zimmer here: http://events.nationalgeographic.com/speakers/2014/10/29/zombie-parasites/

Un vídeo publicado por Anand Varma (@anandavarma) el Oct 10, 2014 at 1:21 PDT

Read a Q&A with Varma about how he captured the photos: goo.gl/b2P89n

Text, images and video via National Geographic