Nature means war. Animals eat animals; plants demolish animals, and mushrooms … mushrooms infect animals! You don’t believe it? Yeah, I would be really relieved if that was not the case. The spurs of the sac fungi of the genus Cordyceps infest insects and arachnids and start to grow while using them as hotbeds. After a while, the mushroom can control the host and enforces it to take it to favorable places, where it can absorb energy from the sun in order to release more spurs so that they can then restart the whole cycle.
The roundworm Myrmeconema neotropicum penetrates into ants in order to take their nervous system. From there it can telecontrol them easily until the host dies. And after some time, it really acts at the roundworm’es will. The roundworm causes the abdomen of the ant to swell until it turns red. After that, it lets them look for berries. There, it waits until the ant is eaten by a bird, which has confused it with the berry. Only then, the worm can propagate in the bird’s gut.
The distoma Leucochloridium paradoxum likes to settle down inside snails. Having arrived, it renders sexual organ useless and then trails further into the nervous system. There, it ensures that the snail only obeys the distoma. At first, the snail’s eyes start to turn into a different color so that they can be perceived easily. Then, the distoma forces it to climb onto high branches. Here, the snail becomes easy prey for birds, which will catch them gratefully. The worm can then propagate in the bird’s gut. Its eggs are excreted with the bird’s fecal and the cycle starts over.
These were only three examples for parasitic life forms, which turn their hosts into abulic zombies, but the list is actually much longer. Let’s see when there will be a worm or mushroom which could infest us human beings…
Image Source: http://sciencebasedlife.wordpress.com/2012/06/17/freaky-fungus-turns-a-tarantula-into-a-work-of-art/
