Hypnotists
Brood parasitism Is where a parasite uses its host to raise its young - a little bit like the lazy Mayzie bird in Dr Suse's book, 'Horton hatches the egg', except, more sinister. Usually, trickery, mimicry and predation of the host's own eggs is involved. Cuckoo catfish While the cuckoo catfish doesn't use mimicry to trick the foster mother, a mouth-breeding cichlid fish, into picking up and adopting the catfish eggs, it is just as sinister as the cuckoo's chick who destroys the host's eggs. The catfish young hatches before the cichlid's and quickly gobbles up its foster mother's own eggs. The parasitic fish exploit the hosts to avoid predation inside their hosts mouth. Public domain The weird cichlid and catfish relationship is captured in this hair-rising video, by NZ Geo : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnvbVIcZZHc Spider wasp Female Golden Hunting Wasp dragging paralysed spider to its nest. The wasp hypnotises the spider to bui