There are zombie parasites that infect animals' brains and make them do weird
- stuff. - Let's talk about that.
♪ (theme music) ♪
- Good Mythical Morning! - We live in a world surrounded by things
that are trying to get into your body
and infect you and control you. Don't be alarmed!
The ones that can control your mind and make you do weird stuff are only infecting
- animals at this point. (laughing) - (crew offscreen laughing)
- (stammering) - There's no precedent for things that
infect animals and start affecting humans is there, Link?
- (evil laughter) - But these are… Oh, goodness.
I'm now more scared to talk about this stuff.
- Hey, listen. - I didn't have that connection...
- It's gonna get scary. - …when I was thinking--
If any of these things happen to you during your lifetime, it will be a bad day.
Boopity boop boop boop! (etc.) We've both done some research,
- so I've got the first one here. - Do it to it.
First of all, I wanna show you these two spiderwebs made by the same Costa Rican
spider, but one of them is zombified. You tell me which spiderweb is the
- zombie spiderweb. - Uh, I'm gonna guess it's the one that
- looks like a dreamcatcher. - Ding ding ding ding!
- But I'm gonna… - Had in my car in high school.
- (Link laughing) No, you didn't. - Never had that. If you have one right
- now, you need to get rid of it. - That's like the last thing someone with
- your personality would ever have. - (laughing)
You would be some embarrassed. As a punishment for something, I'm gonna
give you one, and you have to hang it up on your rear view mirror.
- Oh, okay. - But you ride with me every day to work,
- so that makes it weirder. - it would.
I'm gonna call this a nightmare catcher. A pregnant, parasitic wasp lands on this
Costa Rican spider, paralyzes the spider, and then lays an egg on its abdomen.
- Goes away. And then the spider just - Oh, that's nice.
goes about its business until the larva -- or larvae, I think there's more
- in there -- are ready to pupate. - Yeah. Ho!
- And at that point... - Get ready to pupate!
- Yeah, that's like a rap term. - Are y'all ready to pupate?!
- That's like a rap term waiting to happen. - (laughing)
The pupae inject the spider with a chemical that makes it a zombie,
and the spider spins that bizarre dreamcatcher-like web.
- Crazy! - Why does it make this web? Because
it doesn't need to catch insects to feed itself like the spider does. It needs to
create a secure, safe, longterm place for it to build a cocoon. So what it does
is it makes the spider spin the web, and then the spider goes to the center and
- just sits, motionless, and waits. - Because he's embarrassed about that
- web he just made. - (laughing)
(nasally voice) "Oh man, I screwed this one up!"
- (also nasally) "This one is very ugly." - "But I'm infected, guys. I have an...
- …excuse." - "All the Costa Rican spiders...
- Are y'all ready to pupate?! - …should laugh at me."
The wasp larva emerges from the paralyzed spider, kills the spider...
- Yeah. - …sucks its innards out and eats it….
- Right. - …ditches the body, and then builds
a cocoon right there in the middle. That dreamcatcher structure is stronger,
more resistant to rain, and will stay together for that whole period of
it to come out like a butterfly. Except It's not a butterfly; it is a zombie,
- parasitic wasp! - Nasty.
I mean, my mind is blown, guys. That's crazy, but also scary.
Link, it gets worse. This one involves a cow, a liver, feces, snails,
- grass, ants, and darkness. - (Link) Sounds like my senior prom night.
- Ooh. (laughing) - (laughing)
I was there. I don't remember any of those things. Okay, this is a flatworm that
makes… that makes -- Actually, it mates, guys. It mates inside of a cow's liver,
which I've always thought was a very romantic spot. And then makes an exit
in the cow's feces. In the cow's patties. (chuckles)
- And then snails eat the cow patties. - Okay.
And the liver fluke larvae end up in the snail's di-jeff-tive --digestive tract,
- Okay. - and then the snail gets rid of the
flukes by excreting them in the snail's slime trial. So apparently the slime trail
- is like… snail dookie. - Snail poop.
- I didn't know that. - That's good to know.
- So they're in there… - I'll stop licking that now.
and then ants come along and eat snail goo from slime trails.
- I didn't know that either. - The ants don't know what they're eating.
So now there's a juvenile lancet liver fluke inside the ant, that grows up to
become a teenage lancet liver fluke, that then begins to control the ant's
nervous system. And this is where it gets weird.
- And zombified? - It zombifies it and causes it to --
only during night -- climb up onto blades of grass and hang on the end of a blade
of grass all night long. Until a cow...
- ♪ (All night long) ♪ - …that is in for a night snack,
comes along and eats the grass. And the whole process starts over again.
What if a cow doesn't come along? He just dangles there?
If the cow doesn't come along, when the sun comes back up, it quits
controlling it and it goes back doing its regular ant business into the next night.
(banging with each word) I'm not making this up Link. This happens in nature.
This is nature, people!
That's crazy, dude. It's like the plot to Ocean's Eleven. Like I had to watch it
three times, like, "How did they really get that money?" It's like...
- We should pitch this. - "Did they really need a snail that money
- outta the vault?" (laughing) - We should pitch this for Ocean's Fourteen.
Don Cheadle plays the cow, and Julia Roberts plays the snail.
- Who plays the feces? - Um, that dude -- the Asain dude who was
- quiet, but he could fit into anything. - Okay, yeah.
- Okay, you're playing the feces. - Sacculina carc… (mumbles)
A.K.A. the creepy crab-sac parasite. It's a barnacle-like parasite that floats
around in the o-shee-own -- uh, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, and Fourteen now --
- Okay. - and it attaches to a crab and grows
out of the crab's stomach. (stammering) It creates this creepy sac.
- I mean, look at this thing here. - Like a fanny pack for a crab.
- Yeah. - It's like a European at Disneyland.
(laughing) Sure. And then he starts controlling this crab's life to do
- whatever he wants to do. - Oh...
First of all, the sacculina wants the crab to be female, so if it finds itself
- attached… If it's attached to a male, - (breathy) "I want you to be female!"
it will alter the hormones of the male in order to make it act -- basically,
- turn more female. Right - Really. That's quite a fanny pack.
I've always thought they were feminine, those fanny packs.
It becomes more female in shape, they start to do female mating dancees --
- (nasally voice) "dancees." And this is - (laughing) Those dancees!
basically because there's eggs in that fanny pack, and they want the crab to
be female so it will have an instinct to care for the sacculina carcini children
as it if were the crab's own children. So it's a zombie crab taking...
- Oh my goodness. - surrogately taking care of these babies.
And when the babies come out of the sac, the crab does what a mama crab would do
and it takes its claw and swirls it around
- and just swirls the eggs into the… - Scrambled eggs. Scrambled crab eggs.
- Well, it doesn't kill 'em. It circulates - My favorite!
them so they can attach to other crabs. Crazy!
- This happens? - Conclusion? Crazy!
This also happens. This one's tough to watch. Um… this is a parasitic worm
called the nematomorph hair worm. This thing goes inside of a -- well, it's
ingested. The microscopic larvae are ingested by crickets and grasshoppers and
praying mantises. Who's gonna go after a praying mantis? Come on. Gimme
- a break. And uh... - They're so cute, and they're religious.
Hm, yeah. And then this thing gets inside of their host, and it grows to three to
four times the length of the animal that they're in. It's like having a garden hose
- inside your body. - Ugh! That's quite a landscaping accident.
- And then -- (laughing) - What do you have to be doing in
- someone's yard… - (gruff) "I turned it up too high, Stuart!
- Man! - Now it's totally inside of me."
- (laughing) Oh, gosh! - (Rhett and crew offscreen laughing)
- "Stuart! - "Here, press me right here." Psssh!
Stuart! Don't approach the garden hose in that manner. Whup! Too late."
(laughing) Then once this worm is completely ready to come out,
it takes over the cricket or the praying mantis or the grasshopper's mind
using chemicals. And it makes the insect seek out water.
- Okay. - And it goes to water and then this
happens, Link. This video went viral. This is a praying mantis that the guy
somehow knew was infected with this hair worm and so he sprayed water on
- it, and then this happened. - Oh. My. Goodness.
Don't show me this. I'm-- You're showing it. Okay.
- Look at that. (moaning) - Uh-uh. Uh-uh.
That's like the garden hose coming right out of Stuart.
"Push, Stuart! Push! Here it comes"
- "It'll all the over soon!" - This is the most disturbing thing I've
- ever seen in my life. - All right. I've got one more I'ma
- try to squeeze out, in order to squeeze - Okay.
- that memory out of my mind. - (crew offscreen laughing)
- Squeeze it out, Link. - Trematodes are another flatworm
parasite. It has this bizarre air-to-sea life cycle. They reproduce in the
stomachs of shore birds, so I'm talking, like...
- Great place. - …seagulls (high "caw" sound). That's not
- a seagull. What's a seagull sound like? - That was pretty close.
- (high "wah" sound) Nope. - Mm? Mm. It's higher than that.
They poop out the eggs into the water, and then the sea snails, like horned snails,
- eat the poop of sea gulls… - These snails gotta learn a lesson.
- Stop eatin' poop, snails! - …and then they're infected by the
- parasite larvae which castrate the snail. - Oh.
Thanks for that. Givin' 'em a nice home. What's the first thing you do?
- Work with me a little bit. - Gotta take care of business here.
- Snails got the raw end of the deal. - (whoosh) It's probably not hard to
castrate a snail. I'm just guessing. Probably easily done.
- (Link and crew offscreen laughing) - The eggs develop and swim out of the
snail into the marsh water and then latch onto the gills of a fish, go inside, make
their way to the brain, make a carpet-like covering over the brain of a fish,
zombify the fish, and control it so that it makes its way to the surface,
shimmies, jerks, flashes, and surfaces like, "Glargh." The fish start...
It tells the fish to start doing some crazy...
- "birds please eat me" dance. - That's my favorite dance.
'Cause that's what happens, like, "I'm doin' the 'birds please…"
- (unison) …eat me' dance." (laughing)
Everybody get ready to pupate, 'cause we're doin' the "birds get ready to eat me"
- dance. (laughing) - Right. I knew that was coming.
And so then the birds eat and then the cycle starts all over.
This happens, man! This is happening all around you in nature! And one of these
days, one of these things is going to go inside of your brain. And make you do weird
- stuff. That's what you learned today. - And if you're not scared yet...
thanks for liking and commenting on this video.
- You know what time it is. - (robotic voice) Greetings, Earthlings.
I am known as Zylok. I was materialized on the planet Vultrax.
And it is time to spin The Wheel of Mythicality. (whoosh)
Get your Rhett & Link Good Mythical Morning bobble head!
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everywhere and take some snapshot-y. Click through to Good Mythical More.
I've got the crazy cat lady parasite. We got to talk about this, y'all.
"Syrup: The Musical."
- (humming) (snapping) - ♪ (You know when I'm making my) ♪
- ♪ (breakfast cakes.) ♪ - ♪ (I gotta make them a little moist!) ♪
- ♪ (So I put some of that gooey gooey…) ♪ - (unison) ♪ (Gooey on toooooooooooop!) ♪
- ♪ (I'm talkin'...) ♪ - ♪ (You know it's--) ♪
- (unison) ♪ (…'bout syrup!) ♪ - ♪ (Baby! Syrup, baby!) ♪
- ♪ (Syrup is what I need.) ♪ - ♪ (Baby! Baby!) ♪
♪ (Just a little sugar on my sugar cakes.) ♪
♪ (Makes my baby cakes go crazy.) ♪
[Captioned by Kevin: GMM Captioning Team]