Zombie Ants and Killer Fungus

nibbles2004 writes "An article in the Guardian newspaper shows how parasitic fungi evolved the ability to control ants they infect, ultimately leading the ant to its death. The fungus controls the ant's movements to a suitable leaf and causes the ant to grip onto the leaf's central stem, allowing the fungus to spore, which will allow more ants to become infected."

Comments

BBC Planet Earth shows this

[anethema]

BBC Planet Earth shows the cordyceps fungus attacking some Bullet Ants in South America. It is incredible camera work showing the ant being forced to climb, and later a time lapse of the fruit body erupting from the ant's body. It is short but very well filmed, as is the case for the entire series.

HIGHLY recommend watching this if you have any interest in nature.

The cordyceps section is around 28 minutes into the "Jungle" episode. You won't be dissapointed.

Actually I searched youtube and found an excert of this episide including the cordyceps on the ants. The cordyceps part starts about 4 minutes into this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qabQZQQrGk

I still recommend getting the blue-ray or at least dvd of this series, can't say enough good things about it in general.

Re:BBC Planet Earth shows this

[anethema]

By the way having read the article better, it seems to imply the fungus actually is taking "over its brain and muscles" then killing the creature. In reality it is likely the fungus is making the ant feel more comfortable in this area or changing the way its pheremones tell it to go.

The incredible thing though, is according to wikipedia: "The changes in the behavior of the infected ants are very specific and tuned for the benefit of the fungus. The ants generally clamp to a leaf's vein about 25 cm above the ground, on the northern side of the plant, in an environment with 94-95% humidity and temperatures between 20 -30 degrees C. "

That is pretty damn specific, amazing so simple an organism can induce behavior that complex in an ant.

Re:I may be wrong...

[MichaelSmith]

Its interesting because my nephew was diagnosed with fungal meningitis about 18 months ago. He was otherwise healthy, not immune deficient. He is 15, does well at school and plays sport. A scientist who works in the field told me that treatment for fungal infections is much harder than for bacteria because more things which kill fungus, also kill us.

So far I haven't seen any fungus induced behavior change in my nephew, apart from the normal effects of a brain infection.

Re:I may be wrong...

[blair1q]

And you probably won't.

Ant brains are very tiny, and the control and regulation mechanisms in them are simple. Human brains are immense, complex, and very hard to control. A fungus could make it fuzzy or twitchy, but to actually alter a behavior to its own ends is unlikely times ten to the fifteenth power.

There are about 1.5 million kinds of fungi, many of which will infect humans (basically move in and treat us like a tree root). They can live in us, but they don't particularly get anything out of us evolutionarily until we die and they can become spores as our corpses dessicate. Which they're content to wait for, as long as we haven't developed anything to kill them outright that might result in superiority of mutations that (a) don't die from our medicine and (b) make us reject medicine entirely. (Maybe scientologists and christian fundamentalists have a brain fungus. It would explain a lot.)

The really interesting thing is that while the spores are contagious (it's how we get infected), the living form of the fungi are generally not. So your nephew most likely can't infect anyone by contact.