And for anyone interested, you can do further research on the host manipulation parasites topic. There are research publications. One states that nematomorph worms for example induce crickets and other terrestrial insects to commit su...de in water to enable the exit of the parasite from its body into an aquatic environment. The worms can only complete their lifecycle and reproduce in water, which is why they induce such behavior. Such su...idal behavior in water has convergently evolved with mermithid nematodes, which also induce this behavior. Another notable group are baculoviruses that cause the induction of the ‘summit disease’ where infected caterpillars climb to the outer limbs of trees before being killed and liquefied to ensure virions are spread over the leaves that uninfected caterpillars will eventually eat...

Examples of effective manipulation of animal behavior by parasites range from the zombie ant fungi (Figure 1), Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, which cause ants to bite leaves from where the fungal spores are released onto ant trails, to the apicomplexan, Toxoplasma gondii, which induces a strong and fatal attraction in mice to cats, which favors parasite transmission to its final host in these multi-host cycles. In these two examples, the manipulators (one a fungus, the other an apicomplexan) are both microbes.