Hello and welcome to your final Daily Fun Fact From Flora of the week.

Today we are looking at a very cool fungus. It is known as the ZOMBIE ANT FUNGUS.

Get ready to party.

I know. And yes, it is as cool as it sounds.

Now fungi are a pretty weird bunch of organisms and include the yeasts , molds and mushrooms. They are actually more closely related to animals than they are to plants — they don’t have chloroplasts and they are heterotrophic (meaning they can’t make their own food like autotrophs — aka plants and algae — but have to eat other things instead).

Now we"ve only classified 120,000 (lol “only”) but we estimate that there are about 3.8 MILLION FUNGAL SPECIES OUT THERE.

Like what the diddly -fuck.

SO anyways — I know you’re dying to know what on earth a zombie ant fungus is.

Well it is a species of entomopathogenic fungus. That basically means it can act as a parasite of insects that severely disables or killsthem. Oopsies.

It lives in tropical forests and its favourite ant to infect is the species Camponotus leonardi this little guy.

NOT THAT KIND OF LEONARDI.

That’s better.

Now — what it does is it attaches its spores to the exoskeletons of these ants as they make their way along the forest floor. Once they latch on they use a whole bunch of digestive enzymes and mechanical pressure to FORCE THEIR WAY IN.

Once the fungus is inside the ant it can travel to the brain and is able to take over the central nervous system (what kind of sci-fi crap is this) of the ant through the release of various compounds. If you want to be really fancy — the two best contenders we have for those brain-altering chemicals are sphingosine and guanidinobutyric acid (GBA).

Now these ants like to dwell at the tops of trees. But the fungus doesn’t like that. So it o begins to alter the behaviour of the ant. This results in full-body convulsions that cause the ant to fall from the tree canopy to the forest floor.

AS IF THAT ISN"T ENOUGH — the fungus decides that actually it doesn’t like the forest floor so much and so it forces the ant to climb the stem of a plant and grab onto a leaf vein that is usually about 25cm off the floor.

Now scientists have done studies and found that 25cm is actually the optimal height for spore dispersal in these forested environments so that is one damn smart fungus.

The fungus then has a great time as it slowly eats the ant from the inside. Ew. Not nice way to go. But you"d think the ant would fall when it died. NOT SO MUCH.

The fungus forces the ant to bite onto that leaf SO HARD that it remains attached to the plant even when it dies. The fungus even releases antimicrobials to make sure that the ant is not invaded by other microorganisms.

The fungus then grows its fruiting body (the bit that makes spores — the part you eat of a mushroom) OUT OF THE ANT"S HEAD and then the spores can be released into the forest.

WHAT THE FUCK.

Damn nature — you scary.

Hope you enjoyed your fact of the day and aren’t too traumatised :)))))))

Lots of love,

Flora