What is clear is that it would be extremely difficult for a fungus to start hijacking human bodies in the way Ophiocordyceps has its way with ants. At least we have this small comfort. Now That's Interesting Ants are not solitary beings by nature, but live in tightly packed nests. When ...
or margins ofleaves. Graveyards of dozens of infected ants, all with fungal stalksprotrudingfrom their bodies and anchored to leaves or twigs at roughly the same distance from the ground, are sometimes found and indicate just how precisely the fungus can control the dying behaviors of its ...
Scientists following seemingly drunk zombie ants, infected with a fungus in the species of Ophiocordyceps, found the fungi fill the ant's head with fungal cells and change the ant's muscles so the ant can grab a leaf in a death grip just when and where the fungus wants it. Here, a zom...
Fungus that controls zombie-ants has own fungal stalkerA specialized parasite fungus can control ants' behavior. But that fungus also faces its own deadly, specialized parasites.HarmonKatherine
plant or tree before the fungus can spew forth its deadly spores. what hughes and his colleagues discovered is that the part of the plant the ants bites depends the climate of the region, suggesting that the manipulative fungus has evolved, rather cleverly, to deal with its changing ...
having been castrated by an hyperparasite fungus (white with yellow material). This is no longer a threat to the ants. Credit: David Hughes New research on a parasite that fights zombie-ant fungus, an infestation that takes over the brain and then ejects its spores out of the ant’s ...
The scientific journal, Plos ONE, published a study on March 2nd, 2011, in which scientific researchers from Brazil, the USA & the UK explain they started investigating after discovering dead carpenter ants with fungus growing out of their bodies. ...
A specialized parasite fungus can control ants' behavior. But that fungus also faces its own deadly, specialized parasites
A carpenter ant infected with the zombie-ant fungus. Credit: David P Hughes The zombie-ant fungus is part of theOphiocordyceps genus, and its strange way of infecting worker ants’ heads and controlling them to distribute more spores has been well documented in scientific literature. ...
A dead ant, after being zombified by a species of parasitic fungus. (Image credit: David P. Hughes) The world just got a little weirder: Scientists have identified four new species of brain-controlling fungi that turn ants into zombies that do the parasite's bidding before it kills them...