Real Life Zombies: Can Consciousness Be Controlled?

This astonishing disease prevents the host from controlling its own behaviors - making actionable choices on its behalf and overriding innate survival instincts.

We're not talking human zombies - don't expect Word War Z just yet - but rather insect ones.

The most extreme zombification takes place in ants, in three bizarre phases:

 

1. Invasion

To create a zombie-ant, first a Cordyceps fungal spore must attach itself and use enzymes and pressure to blow a hole into the ant's body.

"We know from studies of fungal parasites of plants, particularly rice, they can build up a pressure inside their spore equivalent to the pressure in the wheel of a 747," says David Hughes, a behavioral ecologist at Pennsylvania State University, who studies the disease.

With its genetic material blasted into the ant host, the fungi grows rapidly. It then releases a cocktail of mind-controlling chemicals into the ant's brain and begins to take over its conscious behaviors.

 

2. Zombification

Within two weeks of the invasion, the ant leaves his colony and seeks a specific location in the forest, guided by the parasitic fungi.

He heads for a target destination preferred by the fungus - the perfect warm, humid environment from which Cordyceps can perform its next horrifying act.

With remarkable precision, Hughes explaines, the ant is "manipulated to bite onto a very specific location on the underside of a leaf, the main vein of a leaf, leaves orientated north, northwest, roughly 25cm off the ground."

According to Hughes, it's one of the most complex examples of parasitic manipulation. To the rest of us, it's like zombification.

And the weirdest bit is yet to come...

 

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