Mutant Ant Fungus Thing.
Stolen from BoingBoing
who took it from Random Good Stuff
Deep in the Cameroonian rain forests of west-central Africa there lives a floor-dwelling ant known as Megaloponera foetens, or more commonly, the stink ant. This large ant -— indeed, one of the very few capable of emitting a cry audible to the human ear -— survives by foraging for food among the fallen leaves and undergrowth of the extraordinarily rich rain-forest floor.
On occasion, while thus foraging, one of these ants will become infected by inhaling the microscopic spore of a fungus from the genus Tomentella, millions of which rain down upon the forest floor from somewhere in the canopy above. Upon being inhaled, the spore lodges itself inside the ant’s tiny brain and immediately begins to grow, quickly fomenting bizarre behavioral changes in its ant host. The creature appears troubled and confused, and presently, for the first time in its life, it leaves the forest floor and begins an arduous climb up the stalks of vines and ferns.
Driven on and on by the still-growing fungus, the ant finally achieves a seemingly prescribed height whereupon, utterly spent, it impales the plant with its mandibles and, thus affixed, waits to die. Ants that have met their doom in this fashion are quite a common sight in certain sections of the rain forest.
The fungus, for its part, lives on. It continues to consume the brain, moving on through the rest of the nervous system and, eventually, through all the soft tissue that remains of the ant. After approximately two weeks, a spikelike protrusion erupts from out of what had once been the ant’s head. Growing to a length of about an inch and a half, the spike features a bright orange tip, heavy-laden with spores, which now begin to rain down onto the forest floor for other unsuspecting ants to inhale.
The following video was shown on Planet Earth, a series which I, regretably, never saw a single episode of, but has been highly praised from anyone who talks about it.
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Excellent post jim.. I love all this type of stuff, and nature programs about ants in particular always fasinate me.. David Attenborough is the man when it comes to nature documentories.. Listening to other documentories without his voice just "doesnt feel right". He is an instiutution.
Check it Jim, I recently downloaded all the Blue Planet Series along with the Planet Earth series but i was running out of disk space and in a rash moment i went and deleted them all without even watching one!! gutting!
After mentioning about Rich Attenborough i went on to Wikipedia to find out some more information on him and needless to say he has an amazing curriculm vitae.
Whats interesing to note is that he has never switched to another channel and has always been a BBC man spanning from 1952!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Attenborough
Good skills. I was Wiki’ing last night for "Driver Ants".. Though I’m not sure that was actually what I was searching for– I remember seeing a documentory on ants a while back, about these proper nasty baby killer ants, who moved around within Ant-trails, as they do, but along the outside, and stationary, were these really mean bastart commando ants who acted as a wall, protecting the workers. if anything tried to cross the trail– spider, mouse, rat, dog… bosh, incapacitated and thrown to the worker ants, who would take it with. fucking ant-tastic.
Done a bit more research, it looks like "Pinching ants" are what I was after… check out some stories of the critters here.
http://www.blessedquietness.com/yarn/pinching.htm
ahhh yeah man, i think ive seen that one too… the commando ants have massive jaw braking heads dont they… you wouldnt want to mess with those bad boys… they’d drop you in an instant.
I remember reading something similar to this story a while back where some sort of parasite takes control of a cockroach by injecting its brain and then controlling the senses of movement.. Then at this point the cockroach is under the complete control of the parasite. Then the parasite leads it to somewhere secluded.. Remeber guys that at this point the cockroach is fully alive but is in some kind of zombie state. - Then this parasite somehow lays eggs inside the cockroach (im a bit sketchy on the details) and then the baby parasites eat the cockroach from the inside out, and all the while the cockroach is fully alive and can stay alive upto something like 2 weeks (if i remember correctly) while it is being eaten..
Man, i cant remember where i read that story but let me see if i can find the link.. - Its another horror insect story which is jaw droppingly unbelivable
Man, you watch movies like The Thing, and (of course) the Alien series, but its not far from the truth in some ways!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/wildfacts/factfiles/3086.shtml
More on my ants here. :) they’re actally called Siafu ants
Another great read there Jim.. Some crazy stories.
This quote says it all:
"They would eat everything in sight that moved. They ate very little of our regular food, but they would eat all mice, scorpions, spiders, etc. They would kill and eat dogs and cats if they were trapped in the house also. "
The clever buggers even communicate and all attack you at once. - Can u imagine turning on a torch at night and find your whole tent covered in these little bar-stewards.
ive just found my zombie cockroach story… it was on boingboing.. this is a must read. Its wasnt a parasite but a wasp which takes control of the cockroach. - After injecting the cockroach the wasp actually sites on the cockroaches back and rides the cockroach like we would ride a horse… ( Okay i made that but up, but you can imagine the wasps having a cockroach derby where they race other cockroaches for wasp-money )
Heres the article:
The wasp slips her stinger through the roach’s exoskeleton and directly into its brain. She apparently use ssensors along the sides of the stinger to guide it through the brain, a bit like a surgeon snaking his way to an appendix with a laparoscope. She continues to probe the roach’s brain until she reaches one particular spot that appears to control the escape reflex. She injects a second venom that influences these neurons in such a way that the escape reflex disappears.
From the outside, the effect is surreal. The wasp does not paralyze the cockroach. In fact, the roach is able to lift up its front legs again and walk. But now it cannot move of its own accord. The wasp takes hold of one of the roach’s antennae and leads it–in the words of Israeli scientists who study Ampulex–like a dog on a leash.
The zombie roach crawls where its master leads, which turns out to be the wasp’s burrow. The roach creeps obediently into the burrow and sits there quietly, while the wasp plugs up the burrow with pebbles. Now the wasp turns to the roach once more and lays an egg on its underside. The roach does not resist. The egg hatches, and the larva chews a hole in the side of the roach. In it goes.
The larva grows inside the roach, devouring the organs of its host, for about eight days. It is then ready to weave itself a cocoon–which it makes within the roach as well. After four more weeks, the wasp grows to an adult. It breaks out of its cocoon, and out of the roach as well. Seeing a full-grown wasp crawl out of a roach suddenly makes those Alien movies look pretty derivative.
hahaha, from your bbc wildfacts article
Diet
Army ants feed on any animal life in their path! They hunt by swarming. They will dismember up to 100,000 prey animals in a single raid.
Yum, yum..
Mate, your Zombie cockroach story is ace… Nature is just absolutely fucking amazing. never fails to amaze me.
"Nature finds a way"
Oh, I found Planet Earth on Newsgroups last night… downloading now.
More amazing nature:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCgtYWUybIE
And some more, this time Wasps…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6291429.stm