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

Obligatory...

[millennial]

I wonder if the zombie ants have a higher chance of infecting others if the leaves they cling to are the leaves of GRAAAAIIIIIINNNNSSS?

Re:Obligatory...

[abigor]

Hahaha, that was retarded but hilarious.

hmm..

[Anonymous Coward]

M. Night Shiamalan will probably make a stupid movie about this.

Re:hmm..

[Anonymous Coward]

... and it would somehow make money in the box office.

Re:hmm..

[owlnation]

M. Night Shiamalan will probably make a stupid movie about this.

With a twist.

Re:hmm..

[i_ate_god]

We're the FLORA, and what we thought was flora, IS ACTUALLY THE FAUNA

Re:hmm..

[tgd]

M. Night Shiamalan will probably make a stupid movie about this.

Well, that'd be quite a step up from his other movies, at least.

Re:hmm..

[MrNaz]

It's because there is a fungus that turns consumers into zombies.

Re:hmm..

[Lord_of_the_nerf]

Or George Romero will make an AWESOME one.

I may be wrong...

[Shadow Wrought]

But isn't this same fungus found in some humans, too? It doesn't cause them to climb trees, but it does tend to make them more aggressive, paranoid, and less able to deal with authority IIRC. I thought there was a /. story about it, and how the the higher a country's proportion of infection was, the more likely they were to have a better Soccer team...

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.

BBC

[genican1]

This was featured on the BBC series Planet Earth- the episode on jungles. Very cool to see a fungi erupt from an ant's head!

Bad summary

[cytoman]

The article actually explains that this behavior of the fungus controlling the ant has been ongoing for 48 million years. The slashdot summary does not even mention this as the key point.

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:BBC Planet Earth shows this

[tgd]

It doesn't have to induce behavior that complex -- it just has to inhibit or stimulate responses already genetically programmed into the ant.

Its not a safe assumption that anything about the fungus is directly causing those behaviors -- there's a lot of fungus in the world, and there's a lot of species that fungus may grow on. All you need is one combination to be beneficial to the fungus, and it'll spread.

Re:BBC Planet Earth shows this

[rwa2]

Yeah, forget the article, the BBC coverage is much much more awesome! Here's an excerpt of just the cordyceps portion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCOQ0VU24xw

They mention that the other ants in the colony can usually detect when one of the ants gets infected, and actually move her as far from the colony as possible if they can before she goes all Zahn on them.

I remember stumbling upon it when I was watching videos about other parasites. Some good stuff out there... There are also parasites that can do mind control on mammals:
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=547

While you're at it, minus while look for bot fly larvae and of course the intestinal parasites while you're at it. Pleasant dreams!

Re:BBC Planet Earth shows this

[c0lo]

A better (by brevity) YouTube clip to illustrate the article. For young and impressionable kids, time to go to bed at about 1:04-th second from the clip's start.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Nope, that's toxoplasmosis

[garyisabusyguy]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis#Behavioral_changes

A parasite found inthe urinary tracts of felines that infects about half the human population

It makes rats lose their fear of cat urine, and has been linked to schizophrenia in humans

And... Misleading summary.

[IorDMUX]

An article in the Guardian newspaper shows how parasitic fungi evolved the ability to control ants they infect [emphasis added]

No... not really. If you RTFA, it gives a nice outline of what we have known for many years about the fungus controlling the ants, and it mentions the new fact: That evidence of the behavior is found in 48 million-year-old fossilized plants. Nowhere does the article even hint that we have even a remote understanding of the "how".

Allow me to quote the end of the article:

He added: "Of all the parasitic organisms, only a few have evolved this trick of manipulating their host's behaviour.

Why go to the bother? Why are there not more of them?"

Scientists are not clear how the fungus controls the ants it infects, but know that the parasite releases alkaloid chemicals into the insect as it consumes it from the inside.

mind-controlling parasites nothing new

[v1]

I've ran into two better examples of parasite-inducing mind-control / suicide...

1) A parasite that needs to get to water for its adult stage, so just before it climbs out of its host (somewhat aliens-style) it influences it to dive into water:

http://majorityrights.com/index.php/weblog/comments/cricket_infected_with_gordian_worm_committing_suicide/

2) a snail driven to suicidal behavior to attract the next vector, a bird, to continue its life cycle:

http://zombieresearch.net/2009/10/14/zombie-snail-spreads-infection/

X-Files

[thestudio_bob]

This was the bases of an X-Files episode as well, except it was in humans, not in ants.

Re:Oh, nevermind.

[ralphdaugherty]

      We know that:

  - organisms that survived and procreated did something successful, and

  - behavior is inherited.

      This sounds to me like the ant climbs because the fungus is in its head and its trying to escape it by going higher. There's a similar organism reproduction cycle with ants where the ant goes to the top of grass, and the ant is said to be controlled to do that so it is easy prey for a bird where the organism continues the cycle in the intestines.

      The way this should be viewed is that parasites that attacked certain areas of their host that resulted in host behavior that was most successful for the parasite to move to the next stage of growth survived, and others who didn't are not here. Neither "controlled" the host, it is blind evolutionary luck.

      Similar can be said about organisms that release toxins that force a flushing action for their onward journey. Did they "control" the host to develop diarrhea? No, those that perform actions that allow for survival and procreation survived and procreated. Unfortunately for both ants and humans, with devastating, but thoughtless, effectiveness.

  rd

Re:Futurama

[rwa2]

Not to mention
Futurama - Season 3 Ep. 4 Parasites Lost
Though in that case, Fry got quite a lot of upgrades from his intestinal colony.

Re:What a bunch of bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a fungus aficionado, if there is such a thing, and here I was all excited that they'd actually made some progress explaining how the fungus causes the ants to carry out such very specific behaviors. And the summary made it sound like that... But it basically boiled down to a sentence or two at the end of the article saying "We think the fungus uses some kind of chemicals on the ants. We don't really know." What a bunch of bullshit.

Lighten up, Francis.

Re:Fungal infections are rare in humans

[dynamo52]

Toxoplasmosis is not a fungus, but a protozoan (single cell creature) parasite, fungus is in the plant kingdom.

No, fungi are their own kingdom.

The cure...

[Drakkenmensch]

...is obviously giving the ants tiny red crowbars.

Mammalian example

[treeves]

Apparently, toxoplasmosis causes infected rodents to *stop fearing* and avoiding the smell of cat urine, causing the rodents to be more likely to be eaten by cats, completing the cycle by getting the toxoplasma back into cats where they can reproduce. (Rats eat cat turds in the other side of the cycle).
Sorry if you're eating while reading this!
Toxoplasmosis is the reason why pregnant women should not clean out cat litter boxes. It can cause a serious infection in the unborn or newborn baby.
Also, it may cause infected humans to engage in more risky behavior, like driving behavior that leads to increased car accidents. (Or even schizophrenia?)
Heard about it on NPR's Radiolab. Cool show. Get the podcasts.