Zombugs

The closest things to real life zombies seem to keep popping up in the insect kingdom.  I have now come across three seperate ways that bugs can lose control of their minds, and begin to infect their communities.

Artists rendering of a zombie bug.

Zombie Making Fungus

The first phenomanon I found while watching Planet Earth.  There is a fungus called cordyceps, which does something as terrifying as it is amazing.  It infects bugs, and takes over their brain.

In the Planet Earth video below, they show ants being infected, losing their shit, and starting to climb.  They just start climbing what ever's around them.  Somehow the fungus makes their brains want to do it.

Once they get up high, they clamp down with their jaws, and die.  That's when the fungus grows out of their dead bodies, and shoots spores down to infect the other ants.

Not just ants are at risk either, there are all kinds of cordyceps that attack all kinds of different bugs.

Zombie Making Virus

The second occurance is even closer to the common idea of zombies.  This one works with an actual virus instead of a fungus.

Gypsy moth caterpillars are the specific target of a type of baculovirus.  The virus, like the cordyceps fungus, causes the caterpillars to climb trees.  Once up there, they also die, but instead of sprouting spores, they begin to melt.

Their bodies melt into a virusy ooze that rains down on all their unsuspecting buddies, infecting them, and causing them to climb.

Liquidy caterpillar guy.


Body Snatching Flies

The third example was recently brought to my attention be fellow CreCommer Corinne Rikkelman.  She shared with me an article from Scientific American about the decline of honeybee population.

It turns out, these little fly guys will lay eggs in the bees.  A couple days later, usually at night, the bee will just take off, flyin' solo, to nowhere.

It seems like they aren't even in control of their own bodies, as they will walk around in circles.  Eventually the bees die and the fly babies are born safely away from the hive, or at least that's what I assume the purpose of the strange night flight is.