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)

Why AI Is The Future Of Work
Unexpected Dark Matter Discoveries From Super Distant Quasars

More Articles

View All
Natural selection in peppered moths | Middle school biology | Khan Academy
You might be familiar with the idea of evolution, that species change over time, and you can see that if you look at old bones, old fossils, how they change through the fossil record. But the obvious question is, how do these species actually do that? Wha…
Morgan Freeman Decodes the Mark of the Beast | The Story of God
I’ve come to the biblioteca Kasana 10z near the Vatican to meet an expert in early Christianity. Campaigns it–some she tells me she has compelling evidence that reveals the identity of the beast. [Music] Good morning, so what exactly do we have here? …
The Progressives | Period 7: 1890-1945 | AP US History | Khan Academy
After the Civil War, there were enormous changes in American life, with industrialization, urbanization, and immigration changing the composition of who lived in the United States, where they lived, and what they did for a living. But city living and fact…
Introduction to dividing by 2 digits
What we’re going to do in this video is start trying to divide by two-digit numbers. As we’ll see, this is a super important skill that a lot of the rest of mathematics will build off of. But it’s also interesting because it’s a bit of an art. So let’s ju…
Khan Kickoff Pep Talk: Brandi Chastain
Hello Khan Academy students! This is Brandi Chastain, former U.S. Women’s National Team member, Olympic gold medalist, and World Cup champion. I’m here to say to you that what you’re doing is not easy. Trying to learn in an adverse environment to be a ch…
Curvature formula, part 5
So let’s sum up where we are so far. We’re looking at this formula and trying to understand why it corresponds to curvature, why it tells you how much a curve actually curves. The first thing we did is we noticed that this numerator corresponds to a cert…