This video is brought to you by our friends over at Guardio. Stay tuned
till the end of the video for a special offer.
I'm gonna geek out for a second if you don't mind I got a good segue later I
promise The Last of Us is so good! The characters, the acting, the amount of
tissues I'm gonna consume as the show goes on! Every episode is mentally destroying me,
and speaking of mentally destroying, see, let's talk about the Mind hacking fungus
that turns you into a zombie in the show! Don't worry there's no way that's real right...right?
Oh my Animator! Triangle Bob burn the house down on purpose
this time! Get this thing out of here! We're all gonna die!
Hey there! Welcome to Life Noggin!
Zombie fungus is one of over 400 species that belong to the genus
cordyceps most of these species are parasitic targeting insects taking
over their bodies and eventually killing them all in the name of reproduction. Yay!
One of the most studied species is ophiocordyceps unilateralis,
which infects carpenter ants. When the spores of this fungus make contact with a carpenter ant they
attach and grow throughout its body draining it of its nutrients and eventually taking control
over its muscles. The fungus makes the ant leave the nest climb onto a leaf and bite down hard
the fungus then devours the ant and sprouts growths that burst and release more spores.
Nature is so beautiful isn't it? The process takes
anywhere from four days to two weeks. While this may look like mind control,
studies have found that the fungus never penetrates the brain. Instead it controls
the body by forming networks encircling the muscles and in invading the muscle fibers
Scientists believe the fungus then secretes chemicals that make the muscles contract and
while the parts of the brain that control movement of these body parts dies off the
rest of the brains remain intact at least until the end itself dies. This could mean that the ant
is alive and aware of what's happening as it's being physically manipulated. Kind of makes you
feel bad for beheading all those clickers, uh, almost, but luckily they are only make-believe,
and as actual zombie fungus experts have explained there's no current cordyceps
species capable of infecting humans or any other mammal, and if one did somehow
evolve to do so, they most likely wouldn't be sophisticated enough to control your body!
In fact, humans have actually been ingesting one cordycep species for centuries in order to gain a
variety of health benefits. Seriously this one is called opiocordyceps senensis and it grows
from the caterpillar of the hippolus moth. It's a traditional Tibetan and Chinese herb,
and it's used to treat everything from colds, to kidney disorders,
to cancer. While some preliminary research has shown promising results there haven't been many
human studies, so more evidence is still needed to truly know its effectiveness. Nevertheless,
the ophiocordyceps senensis market is really competitive. If you want to buy the real thing
it will cost you over twenty thousand dollars per kilogram, so now, don't worry, you can just let
the TV show an excellent video game mentally destroy you without the fear of the fungus,
for now! Just kidding! I will not hesitate to burn every house down. I won't.
So, have you been watching The Last of Us show or have you played the game? What are
your thoughts? No spoilers, please! Oh, so tell me a video game or show you love that
you would want me to make a sciency video on! Any of them! Leave them down in the comments!
It's not easy to stop these mushroom baddies in the games and TV show but
in my world I have a secret weapon to fight against all these Invaders and
that's using Guardio, the sponsor of today's video!
The animator probably gave them huge muscles because they're really good at fighting
fishing attacks email scams and annoying push notifications. They'll also sound the alarm on
suspicious sites so you can browse stress-free. Guardio blocks a hundred times more harmful sights
and detects these before Google and competitors. Guardio is a buff browser extension that's super
quick to install, and available on the Chrome and Edge store, and this super scanner doesn't
just protect you when you're surfing the internet for totally legal anime sites
either. Guardio safety scan will actually find any existing threats lurking on your computer,
and keep a lookout for future ones, and don't worry, they got you covered on mobile too!
Support life Noggin and scan your browser for threats in just 30 seconds by visiting
Guard.io/lifenoggin and installing the extension. You'll get a seven day free
trial to the premium features, such as real-time threat removal,
so if you want the same powerful protection that the life Noggin world has,
and a 20% discount off their affordable Premium plan, click the first link in the description!
Do all the things that help this channel grow, subscribe, and like,
and whatnot, it really helps us out! Also, check out The Gleam contest Link
in the description for a chance to be turned into a life Noggin character!
Click here to watch this video on living at the
bottom of the ocean with theodd1sout or click here to watch this video!
Life Noggin is powered by the great team over at lifespan.io and as always my name is Blocko,
this has been Life Noggin, don't forget to keep on thinking!