MycoRant

I couldn’t help but notice What If Terrorists Use the ‘Zombie Ant’ Brain Fungus to Make Zombie Suicide Bombers? at Gawker.com:

Remember that brain fungus that forces “zombie ants” to leave their colonies and march around feeding a fungal organism in their brains until one day it pops out and kills them? What if the terrorists get their hands on it?

Uh-huh. Crazy! If ant brains were really similar to human brains it might be worth a shot. But then again, if the underlying molecular mechanism by which the behavioral change is effected in ants, perhaps by some analogous means some progress could be made in that direction. But, in humans, it certainly would not involve direct use of the fungus.

The article goes on to quote a national security blogger,  Adam Weinstein of Current Intelligence who writes some interesting paranoid thoughts in a post entitled Zombie Ants: Should Governments Be Scared?

No, they shouldn’t. Decent pictures of ants with fungus growing out of their heads though. I can’t find any images of the exact fungus referenced in the research recently published in Biology Letters (Ophiocordyceps) but this one of Cordyceps from wiki commns is pretty spectacular.

Cordyceps on the job (Erich G. Vallery, USDA Forest Service - SRS-4552, United States)

Tags: Cordyceps, entomopathogenic fungi, Ophiocordyceps, paranoia, terrorism, zombie ant fungus