Invest in dead bodies, people. They’re as good a piece of real estate as anything else.
In fact, the only thing better than dead body real estate is zombie dead body real estate.
To prove the value of zombie real estate, all we have to do is take the case study of a fungus named Ophiocordceps unilateralis. The fungus attacks carpenter ants that live in the forests of Thailand. Once the fungus manages to enter the ant, it positions itself inside the brain of the ant and begins to eat its way from the inside out.
How’s that for your pleasant Monday mental image? A fungus gorging itself on ant innards.
But that’s not all. Once the fungus has stabilized itself inside the dying ant, it uses neurochemicals to attack what is left of the ant’s brain to control the ant’s motor abilities. Near the ant’s death, the fungus basically uses mind control to steer the fungus’ new “home” to a location that the fungus prefers.
At this point, the ant no longer controls its body. Instead, the fungus forces the ant to jerkily climb up to tree leaves that the fungus prefers to live on, hence the “zombification” of the ant.
Specifically, the fungus grows on the underside of leaves sprouting from the northwest side of trees attached to the forest floor at a certain height. Picky little organism.
In its last death throes, the ant will be made to use its mandibles to bite into the leaf. The death grip that the ant exerts is strong enough to keep the ant body on the underside of the leaf and to allow the fungus to grow peacefully in its new home made from a dead body.
Within a few weeks, the fungus matures and begins to drop more spores down to the forest floor, infecting more carpenter ants and reinitiating the cycle of zombification.
In order to survive, the carpenter ants have developed their own form of protection. When they notice sick ants or ants behaving strangely, they preemptively carry them far away from colony sites to keep them from infecting others and let them die in the wild.
Although the fungus seems to be the predator in this horror story, a similarly gruesome fate is set aside for the fungus in the thing-eat-thing world of the jungle — castration. By another fungus, to be exact.
Another fungus, named Ophiocordyceps unilateralis s.l., latches itself onto the ant-killer fungus, and then cuts off the male genitalia of the ant-killer fungus until only 6.5 percent of sperm produced by the fungus are viable.
Ah, zombification and castration all at once. Just a normal day in the jungle.
Oh, and incest! We can’t forget incest!
It is a long-known fact that the “cottony cushion scale bug,” whose more dignified Latin name is Icerya purchase, is able to produce children by itself and without a male mate. In the past, scientists believed that cottony cushion scale bugs were able to do this because they belonged to a group of hermaphrodites, or animals that possess both male and female genitalia.
As Stephen Colbert once said, “love is a full-length mirror.” I guess some critters really take that to heart.
But, recently, scientists have discovered that the cottony cushion scale bug is actually not hermaphroditic and that all of the females produce offspring not with their own sperm, but rather, with their fathers’ sperm.
Eww.
When male cottony cushion scale bugs mate, their extra sperm latches onto the embryos that are formed... and remain there for life. Once the offspring reach sexual maturity, they basically “recycle” the sperm for use by making their own children with the old sperm, which continues to multiply and live off of the next generation.
Because the females no longer need males to mate, scientists predict that males will die out, and females of this species will just continue recycling old sperm over and over again in the future.
On a creepy ending note, the cottony cushion scale bugs originated in New Zealand, but now can be found in citrus groves around the world. In other words, where there are oranges, there used to be incestuous bugs on them.
Think about that the next time you pack your lunch.
Kevin Hwang is a senior at Athens High School who is taking classes at Ohio University. Are you sufficiently grossed out? Email him at kh319910@ohiou.edu.
