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| still from "Shaun of the Dead" taken from Neatorama |
This gives me the creeps: today I read that there is a fungus that can turn ants into 'zombie ants'. The idea just makes me sick, I guess I have been watching too many movies.
Is this some kind of joke? Did I miss a general meeting that agreed on redefining the date for April Fools Day? Has The Onion taken over Science News, Scientific American and Pennsylvania State University?
But still:
A tropical fungus has adapted to infect ants and force them to chomp, with surprising specificity, into perfectly located leaves before killing them and taking over their bodies.
--Scientific American
Now there appears to be another fungus that is the exact natural enemy of the 'zombie fungus' and ants even look for that healthy organism to heal themselves.
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Donald Sutherland in
(still taken from Coppa)
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Source:
- Fungus Makes Zombie Ants Do All the Work (Scientific American, 2009)
- Daytime bites for zombie ants (ScienceNews, 2011)
- Ophiocordyceps unilateralis (Wikipedia)
- Zombie science roundup (Byte Size Biology, 2011)
- Zombie ants have fungus on the brain (PSU, 2011)
- The Zombie-Ant Fungus Is Under Attack, Research Reveals (PSU, 2012)
- 'Zombie' Ants And The Fungus That Saves Them (NPR, 2012)
More creepy stuff:
- Parasitic robots: clock needs to catch and digest flies to keep itself in motion
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