yego.me
yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

'Zombie' Parasite Cordyceps Fungus Takes Over Insects Through Mind Control | National Geographic

less than 1m read
·Nov 11, 2024

Fungi and slime molds race to decompose dead matter on the forest floor. Many spread by releasing spores up to thirty thousand a second. (scary music)

If just one of these spores lands in the right place, and takes root, it can colonize a whole new area. (scary music)

But not all fungi feed on the dead. (scary music) Days ago, a spore landed on this ant, now she's acting strange. A network of roots has infiltrated her muscles. Her body has been taken over by cordyceps, a parasitic fungus. It floods her brain with chemicals, drugging her, compelling her to head where conditions are perfect. (scary music)

Just the right amount of light. Just the right amount of humidity for the parasite growing inside. It forces her to clamp down in a death bite. And cordyceps reveals its gruesome nature. (scary music)

After three weeks of growth, cordyceps can release its own spores. Infecting more ants. Releasing more spores. Infecting more ants. Releasing more spores. Infecting more ants. Infecting more ants. More ants. More ants. More ants. (scary music)

Cordyceps can wipe out entire ant colonies. But more than just ants are at risk. (scary music)

There are over six hundred species of cordyceps spread across the world. Most are found in jungles where they prey on a whole host of victims. (scary music)

Building a Bathhouse in the Arctic | Life Below Zero
Why The Market Hasn't Crashed Yet

More Articles

View All
The 3 BEST HABITS Of Rich People | Shark Tank's Kevin O'Leary
[Music] Gotta have a hobby, gotta do something else. Can’t work all day long. Beautiful day in the park in Boston. This is the Commons. It’s a lovely fall day. You know, swans in the park and all that. I thought it’d be a great time to answer some quest…
How to Make a Delicious Meal For Under $10 | Chef Wonderful
Who made this? Oh, I did! Wow, I’m gonna cry. It’s a masterpiece that should get an Emmy, that should get a Tony, all of it. And that still wouldn’t be enough for what that was. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Chef Wonderful here! Let’s talk about suffolak…
TIL: Almost 40 Percent of New Yorkers Are Immigrants | Today I Learned
So get this, there’s more than 3.2 million people in New York City that were born outside of the United States. Oh, that makes New York City, by a wide margin, the city with the most foreign-born people of any other city in the world. I’m Jar Thorp. I’m …
Executive orders | US government and civics | Khan Academy
What we’re going to discuss in this video is executive orders, and these are directives being issued by the President of the United States that can have the force of law. I know what you’re thinking: isn’t Congress our legislative body, the body that actu…
Example constructing and interpreting a confidence interval for p | AP Statistics | Khan Academy
We’re told Della has over 500 songs on her mobile phone, and she wants to estimate what proportion of the songs are by a female artist. She takes a simple random sample—that’s what SRS stands for—of 50 songs on her phone and finds that 20 of the songs sam…
Simulations and repetition | Intro to CS - Python | Khan Academy
I’m running a coin flip experiment and I want to find out how likely each outcome is: heads or tails. So I flip a coin once, twice, 100 times. Once I’ve repeated that experiment enough times, I see that about 50% of my flips are heads and 50% are tails. …