Zombie Ants Controlled By Fungus

Zombie Ants Controlled By Fungus

www.msnbc.msn.com

Scientists have no clue how the fungus takes control of the brains of ants so effectively.

(visit the link for the full news article)

This fungus Gets in you, eats the parts it needs to survive, and uses your shell for protection, until it's time to move on.

Interesting.

Scary, if you are an ant.

Could this be manipulated to higher species??

I wonder if it could be?

I've always thought the zombie existence of any living thing, would have a little more spiritual meaning to it. But to me, this shows a nice scientific step to creating ZOMBIES. haha.
I laugh out of pure nervousness..

www.msnbc.msn.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 13-8-2009 by Demoncreeper]

Very interesting post. Almost made me feel sorry for the ants

I'd imagine the control mechanism would be chemical in nature... but who knows.

Star and flag.

reply to post by Resinveins


Thank you! I thought the scarier part was that it transforms everything inside the ant to sugars etc to survive... except the muscles, so that it can maintain the grip on the leaves, with the ants mandibles.

[edit on 13-8-2009 by Demoncreeper]

This is awesome.

It won't be long and it'll be getting sprayed on our GM Corn.

Well all I can say about this is...

why olive leaf kills Fungus

Better safe than sorry,

Black Mold is already a household menace. Tone nail Fungus and Jock Itch are just disgusting...

and this flat makes me paranoid lol

I will never not take my Olive Leaf Extract again...

I fraking love nature. I say it all the time, nature will provide for you, and then nature will kill you in a heartbeat.

Zombie fungus. I f'ing love it.

Star and flag for your find.

Funny how they made this news... I saw it in a nature program a year or more ago. They must be lacking sensationalistic news.

reply to post by Demoncreeper

Scary, if you are an ant.

That made me smile.

Very interesting article though, fascinating stuff.

Here's a 2 year old video snip from that program I mentioned.... very hardly news:

saw the headline .said wtf, clicked, now i'm really saying WTF.
this is a really great find op, i already flaged you on it. i wish more of this kind of stuff would be found and posted.this would make for a great sci fi flick.huh. the mutating fungus starts infecting humans.
zombies on there death march, to the nearest tree, where they persist in
digging down to the tree roots, w/ there bare hands. tearing off finger nails and skin exposing their finger bones. finaly sinking there teeth into
the exposed tree root, you hear the jaw lock in place.
then it's all about the various stages of the parasite, breaking down the victim.could be very creepy. yeh yeh or a" b "movie, attack of the giant zombie ants!great thread.


[edit on 13-8-2009 by randyvs]

reply to post by randyvs


That was a fantastic description. haha. I love it!
Luckily, it doesn't seem too sinister. Unless, adapting to humans would be more preferable, than surviving on the underbelly of a leaf.

Then, there could be some trouble. haha.

Very interesting. You should look into the Glyptapanteles, a wasp who lays her eggs in a catipillar host and whose larva later on use mind control to defend there own brothers and sisters. Look it up, it's crazy!

Originally posted by flice
Here's a 2 year old video snip from that program I mentioned.... very hardly news:

I'm going to have nightmares now, thanks. I'll be dreaming about my neck being slowly ripped open by fungus. What a horrible way to die.

Uggghhhhh why did i read this LOL


That is some crazy fungus, it gives me the heebie jeebies lol. yet i cant look away. I also watched the parasitic wasp video also very disturbing.

Starred and Flagged because everyone should be disturbed by zombie fungus dreams

reply to post by Steilhe


...Sorry. Haha.

What makes it worse is, it isn't some "shadow" conspiracy. It exists. Nature, is scarier than any microchip "they" want to put in me.

reply to post by Demoncreeper


Zombie?

BOOM! Headshot!

For those of you who are unaware, ants have a chemical language of some 20ish "words". These words are very easy to use for humans to talk to ants. The existence of these words would make any opportunist fungi able to evolve and take advantage of it.


For this method, no, it could not be brought into other or higher species. Maybe bees and termites and other linguistically insects. Maybe colonial birds in a few million years. But the human brain does not have a complex instinctive language of chemicals written into it like ants do. You may think we do, but nope. Humans use language of their own creation, and it must be learned. There are some invisible chemical languages in the human body but these are manly used for sex and connecting with other people. And a social zombie doesn't exactly have bio weapon written on it.


For animals that do have language written onto their brains since birth, like ants, symbiotic relationships can be created through evolution.

For those of you interested, watch as this man speaks to ants with the chemical language they are born knowing:



www.youtube.com...

[edit on 14-8-2009 by Gorman91]

[edit on 14-8-2009 by Gorman91]

I remember reading about some other parasites or infections that appear to take control over their victims in such a way as to promote the parasite's thriving.

There is a parasite called toxoplasma gondii that infects mammals, most famously cats. During its life cycle it also infects mice and rats. In order to make sure that it gets passed back to the cats, it cause the infected mice to no longer fear the scent of cats. In fact, infected mice will often favor the areas where cats have been, making it much more likely that they'll get eaten by a cat and pass the parasite into a cat.

There is some thinking that toxoplasma can affect human brains, resulting in some people becoming "cat ladies". And there appears to be some connection between toxoplasma and schizophrenia.

There is another parasite that affects cattle, called Dicrocoelium dendriticum. As part of its life cycle it is excreted by cattle and then picked up by ants. This parasite (a liver fluke) causes the ants to move to the tips of grass blades and lock onto the blade with its mandible. That makes it more likely to be eaten by cattle, which then would infect the cattle.

There are some creepy parasites out there. I've never heard of the Glyptapanteles wasp, but I have heard of the ichneumon wasp. That wasp lays its eggs inside caterpillars after first stinging and paralyzing the caterpillar. The wasp eggs grow and develop inside the poor caterpillar, eating it from the inside out - kind of like the movie Alien. The caterpillar doesn't die right away, but can live for days as it's being eaten. Sounds like something out of a horror movie.

Very interesting and creepy at the same time! Makes me think what if somethng like this eventually effects us! Scary.

Anyways thanks for posting.

Peace