Brew: Zombies!
Reanimated husks of the dead returned
to nibble on the flesh of the living.
But when we think of zombies, are
we thinking of the right things?
Zombies, in their original context, were
creatures of folklore borne from stories told
by and to African Hatians in French plantations.
The idea was when a Hatian died, they would return
to Lan Guinée, or more broadly, Africa, however, to
discourage them from taking their own lives, they were
told they wouldn't be able to return to the land of their
ancestors, but be doomed to wander the plantations for
the rest of eternity as prisoners in their own bodies.
The fear of being trapped in one’s own body is oh too real.
So real in fact, that I can say with the utmost certainty
that there are zombies skulking around as we speak.
They might even be lurking under your very own backyard.
What if I told you that this insect is an infected zombie?
Chill: Well why is it… hollow!?
Brew: The only difference between it, and the
movies, is that instead of craving the sweet sweet
flesh of the living, um— it just wants to freak.
Today’s episode concerns insects and parasites!
We’ll be talking about a couple parasites,
and what they do to their hosts.
And, with that out of the way,
Let’s get into it!
When it comes to zombies, there’s no end to
the stories we can tell, and each chooses
to explain their affliction a different way.
George Romero’s films refer to zombies as reanimated dead.
Any human who died after the onset of the zombie
“event” can return to snack on the flesh of
the living, not just those who were bitten.
This is also true in “The Walking Dead”.
Left 4 Dead's Green Flu, and 28 Days Later's “Rage
virus”, explains that their zombies are not reanimated
dead people, but individuals infected with a virus.
Within seconds of coming into contact with the
pathogen, it starts forcing them to act out
aggressively, and without self preservation.
Resident Evil, aside from the numerous viruses created
by the Umbrella Corporation, offers invertebrate
parasites called Plaga as a source of zombification.
It lives inside a host’s body until some unfortunate
soul has the bad luck to watch it burst out to
attack them with all their tentacled horror.
But there are other kinds of parasites people
use to explain their fictional zombie plagues.
In the video game series The Last of Us, the cordyceps
fungus is behind the collapse of civilization,
and the ravenousness of the game’s monsters.
But unfortunately for us, it’s not all fantasy.
The cordyceps fungus is real, and there are other
parasites out there just waiting to get their
little fungal fingers all over unsuspecting victims.
When it comes to real-life, it doesn’t serve a
pathogen well to force its host to ignore their
survival instincts and lash out indiscriminately.
The vast majority of parasites are more
interested in reproducing inside their hosts, and
eating them, than using their hosts to eat us.
Cicadas have a long development.
They lie in wait underground for a whopping 13
or 17 years depending on the species, gestating
until they can emerge in a flurry of wing-ed glory.
Unfortunately for some of these lil’ fellas, Massospora
Cicadina begins its life cycle in the same place that they do.
As they grow to maturity, the spores do as well, eventually
eating away at the insect’s entire abdomen including
their reproductive organs replacing it with a fungal
growth, but it doesn’t limit the bug’s ability to move
around, and complete their life’s purpose, reproducing.
Grill: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
if they don’t have “reproductive
organs” then how do they reproduce?
Brew: Well, technically, they
don’t, they just try their darndest.
The fungus fills its host with substances similar
to psilocybin and cathinone, which amps up
the cicada’s sex drive, pushing them to try to
infect as many other bugs as possible and spread
its spores to other cicadas in the meantime.
Chill: It uses drugs to turn them into zombies?
How does that work?
Brew: Psilocybin is the main active ingredient in
magic mushrooms, while cathinone is an amphetamine.
Other substances of that caliber include
opiates, and coca derivatives among others.
But basically, the fungus makes
the cicada high, and… ahem, randy.
The cicadas attempt to mate, but since their genitals
are now just big Super Mario mushrooms, they instead
just pass on the fungal spores to the other innocent victims.
Wahoo.
Interestingly enough, male cicadas infected with
Massospora perform a “wing-flick” signal that
is otherwise only seen in mature female cicadas.
This signal then attracts other male cicadas who attempt to
mate with the infected male, spreading those spores further.
This behaviour is only seen in cicadas infected
with massospora as they emerged from the ground,
however males who were unfortunate enough to
contract it sexually do not end up behaving that way.
These “stage 2” cicadas become what entomologists have
dubbed “flying saltshakers of death” which, I hope
you agree, is metal as all heck—pardon the language.
The fungus in this stage does not modify the cicada’s
behaviour, however their abdomens are still consumed, and
they instead begin to let out spores as the insect flies.
These spores will settle in the ground, and wait
until the next generation of cicadas crawl out
of their mass nurseries only to find themselves
infected like their parents before them.
For my fellow #gamers, you may be
familiar with this next parasite.
In The Last of Us, the Federal Disaster Response Agency,
calls the zombie illness Cordyceps Brain Infection,
which drives it’s victims to ravenously eat people
before succumbing to the mushrooms, and also this!?
Grill: OH GOD!
What is that?
Brew: It’s a bad dream, but what’s
worse is that cordyceps is real!
Otherwise known as Ophiocordyceps Unilateralis,
this fungus is famously known for its ability to
rewire ants of the species Camponotus leonardi
into zombie harbingers of a fungal apocalypse.
When an ant is first infected, the spores move through
the bloodstream as single cells, multiplying as they go.
Eventually, as their numbers increase, they begin working
together to form small tubes through the ant’s body.
You can see how the spores penetrate into, and
permeate the spaces between muscle tissues in the ant.
David Hughes, an entomologist at Pennsylvania
State University, has also found that other fungal
parasites which don’t take over insects minds, also
form around muscle tissue, but Ophiocordyceps is
unique in that the formations around an ants muscles
are not simply there to sap energy from the insect.
They also transmit information as well as nutrients.
The cordyceps infection generates a sort of
secondary nervous system around the ant’s nervous
system, hijacking it for its own nefarious purposes.
To Hughes' surprise, however, the cordyceps fungus commandeers
the ant’s entire body—without ever touching the brain itself.
Chill: That’s somehow creepier, Brew.
Brew: The whole thing is Creep City,
but it’s also Cool Town Junction.
Grill: So it takes over your
body, but leaves your brain alone?
What if you can still think while it’s taking over?
Ensconcing you in a prison of your own bone,
and all you can do is sit there and watch as you
slowly wither away into a pile of fungi and flesh?
Brew: The point is that Cordyceps isn’t doing the
parasitic equivalent of pushing you off your bike and
riding away, it’s more like it installs a second seat and
starts steering without you ever knowing that it’s there.
It does this by releasing a complex combination
of chemicals into the ant’s nervous system.
Hughes believes that the fungus exerts
more direct control over the ant’s body,
essentially puppeteering the insect’s limbs.
The fungus becomes the ant’s brain, while
the actual brain remains imprisoned.
But that’s not the end of this story.
Cordyceps must do what all creatures are compelled to do.
Grill: Eat!
Chill: Sleep!
Howard: Kill.
Brew: No!
Now that the spores have permeated every nook and cranny
within the insect, it must find a place to reproduce!
Once cordyceps has control, it will compel the
ant to roam the forest floor, searching for
the perfect spot to succumb to its fungal fate.
The ant will climb up the stems of nearby plants to
a height of around 25 centimeters (9.8in), which contains the
right temperature and humidity for the fungus’s growth.
As it reaches optimum heights and moisture, the
ant will be compelled to bite down on the stem
with its mandibles in a terrible death grapple,
permanently locking the ant’s jaws in place.
When the ant is in position, the real show begins,
taking place over the course of three 3-month phases.
The first is the “Dead Ant Phase”, which, as it suggests,
kills the ant and prepares the body for the next phase.
The second is the “Stroma Stage”, in which a stalk begins to
grow out of the ant’s head, and the last is the “Perithecia
Stage”, where a large “fruiting body” develops at the
end of the stalk, releasing more spores into the air.
Unfortunately for the other ants in the
colony, this whole process is usually not far
from where the ant was initially infected.
If they’re really unlucky, it will be right above one
of their trade routes, and the cordyceps fruit will
quickly spread their spores to the rest of the colony.
It’s fun to let our imaginations go wild and think
about all the different ways that the world that we know
could come to an end, and zombies really encapsulate
two of our biggest fears in a really beautiful way.
They take the invisible fear of contagion, and visceral fear
of predation, and wrap it all in a rotten shambling package.
But lucky for us, a real zombie plague is a near
impossibility, and even if it were a likelihood, the
actual forces that zombify creatures across this planet
are a smidge less theatrical than we like to believe.
It doesn’t make it any less horrifying though.
Where TV and film construct terror for our
entertainment, nature does so for no one but
herself, and I think about that at night.
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