Zombie’s are having a well deserved moment right now in literature. Starting with Pride and Predjudice and Zombies and moving to World War Z and Boneshaker, zombie’s are just plain cool. But they couldn’t ever be real… right?
WRONG. At least TWO different species of zombie insect have been found in the Amazon.
Zombie 1: The Brain Eating Zombie – In 2009 National Geographic posted images of a brain eating zombie ant. These undead ants can march over 50 meters in order to avoid attach by other ants. OK.. so this zombie doesn’t actually eat brains, but the flies that create these zombies certainly do. The female phorid fly injects her eggs directly into the brain of a living fire ant. There, they grow, eating delicious ant brain and zombifying it. These terrifying and carnivorous larva are then able to control the brain of the ant in order to move the ant out of the way of danger. Once fully grown the baby fly decapitates it’s host and bursts forth into the world to zombify yet another ant, and so on until the zombie apocalypse!
Zombie 2: Fungus Zombie – This zombie sounds slightly less terrifying but is actually more so. This type of zombie is not restricted to an ant. In fact, everything from spiders to praying mantises have been zombified. Who or what will this terrifying fungus zombify next?? What happens is this: The hapless insect brushes up against an innocuous fungus and just like that, the insect has been infected. The fungus then grows in through the insect’s brain and forces the insect to walk up to a more appealing location on a leaf close to the light where the bug then clamps down onto the leaf and dies. The fungus grows there, happily eating up the insect and waiting for it’s next unsuspecting victim.
Of course, these things only affect insects, and a human body system is way more complex than an insect one, but it's still interesting to consider the possibility of real zombies. Nothing I have read yet has jumped on the whole fungus zombie train, but now that there is some physical backing for this, it’ll be interesting to see if anyone will. What do you think? Will fungus zombie’s be making an entrance?
It sounds like an interesting concept. If the humans aren't actually walking dead, I can see how zombies could exist.
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