Jenny and Erin

Do you ever have uncharacteristic urges to act outside of your typical norm? Like something has taken over your brain and is controlling your thoughts and actions? Thankfully you are not an insect, otherwise you might be infested with the Cordyceps fungus which no amount of awareness or intentional change of habits can rid you of.

Cordyceps is a particularly nasty parasitic fungus that attacks arthropods and insects, such as ants, butterflies and beetles. After attaching to the host’s body it finds it’s way into their tracheal tube and works itself into the insect’s body and brain. As it grows the fungus absorbs the insect’s soft tissue, all the while keeping it’s vital organs alive. Eventually, the Cordyceps fungus takes over the hosts brain and has the host climb a plant and attach itself securely with its mandibles, or jaw.

After the host attaches to the plant, the fungus kills the mindless arthropod or insect so the fungus can do what else, but reproduce! This is the interesting part, to do this the Cordyceps sends out a shoot, similar to a plant, from the insect’s body, typically the head. The shoot can grow ten times taller than the now dead insect in anywhere from a day to a few weeks. It is an amazing sight. Spores then explode from the end of the shoot, thus propagating it’s own species. (Another parasitic species kills the insect by leading it to water where it jumps in and drowns. The parasite emerges and swims away.)

Interestingly, when insects of the same species, such as an ant colony, recognizes that one of their own is exhibiting odd behaviors they carry the sick insect to a distant location to die alone, thus keeping the fungus as far away as possible from their home. Cordyceps is treasured as a Chinese medicine; however after watching the video of the fungus sprouting from the Carpenter Ant’s head, I’m not too keen on ingesting it. Really, you should watch it.

Gives a new perspective on our manageable brain problems, huh?

Thanks to Dangerous Intersection for the inspiration.

This entry was posted in Weird Science on Friday, August 24th, 2007 by Erin Dietrich. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.