Smart People Discover Zombie Ants

You've been infected by a fungus, and your fate is sealed: Your mind is no longer your own, and your sole focus is doing the bidding of your fungal overlord.

The good news is that it's a refreshingly short to do list — only one single task actually. The bad news is that once you're done with that, you die.

It sounds like the makings of some gripping sci-fi horror. It's actually just another day at the office in Thailand for the C. leonardi ant (albeit one that ends with an ultimate pink slip).

As reported by Katherine Harmon in Scientific American, infected ants clamber down from their habitat and commit mandibular harakiri with a full clench death grip on the stem of a leaf. And it gets weirder still:

"All ... had chomped down on the on the underside of a leaf, and 98 percent had landed on a vein. Most had: a) found their way to the north side of the plant, b) chomped on a leaf about 25 centimeters above the ground, c) selected a leaf in an environment with 94 to 95 percent humidity and d) ended up in a location with temperatures between 20 and 30 degrees Celsius. The researchers called this specificity 'remarkable.' "

The conditions where the zombie ants meet their maker combine with their very remains to provide ideal conditions for the fungus to propagate.

Odd and unsettling as it may sound, it's merely the most recent example. Nature may abhor a vacuum, but there's room for zombies at the table. The phenomenon, named adaptive parasite manipulation, has been observed in other species pairings.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons.