The Art of Being a Zombie Ant Fungus
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Mm-hmm.
These parasitic fungi, they're grotesque. They really are. And I think there's no getting away from it. The fact that they colonize these insects, eat them from the inside, so that the insects start sprouting these kind of tendrils of fungus. They're basically devoured until there's just this empty husk of insect left. To us, it just looks bizarre and really Horrible.
To imagine that there's this fungus that goes into this ant and makes it behave in particular ways, really threatens our notions of being in control of our actions. our notions of self, you know, who am I? If there's also this external thing inside of me influencing me. So I think it's quite scary.
These fungi are known as zombie fungi because they seem to zombify the insects that they are growing within. So I think that brings with it quite a lot of baggage from our own human cultural worlds of horror and zombies and and what zombies have come to mean.
My name is Bridget Nichols. I'm a cultural entomologist, which is the study of insects in culture. I put on events. internationally which are between nature and science and the arts.
So I'm the producer. Normally in radio the producer is in control, but I'm wondering how you feel about that, Bridget.
Um I don't I don't mind you announcing you're in control because y you can say it doesn't mean you are. The producer creates the framework for the presenter to fill with ideas and the producer gets to do the final edit, but the presenter gets to Create a world. Cordyceps or zombie ant fungus is this fungus discovered by the British naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace in 1859. When I first came across it a few years ago, I was immediately transfixed and read everything I could find about it for weeks until I needed to do something to tell the world about it. had an idea for a play in which the cordyceps could come alive and be embodied in Human form. It features actors and dancers and musicians and of course scientists.
I'm very curious to see how the artists play with the zombie amp fungus story and the musicians and what they can bring to life from this amazing phenomenon. and also from the scientists how we can extract some facts that really make the artist sing.
My name is Merlin Sheldrake and I'm a biologist and a writer. I study fungi and fungi are a kingdom of life which is as broad a category as animals or plants, but they aren't animals and they aren't plants and they do things their own way. Some fungi have evolved an ability to grow inside insects' bodies and control their behaviour. In a way that suits the fungus. Now one of these fungi is called Ophiacordyceps unilateralis. You don't have a muscular animal body that can walk or bite or fly if you're a fungus. So if you need to disperse yourself from an evolutionary point of view, it sometimes makes sense to borrow an animal body, or in this case, um hijack one. Odiceps unilateralis infects carpenter ants.
The fungus starts to grow within its body, and as much as 40% of an infected ant can be fungus. And the ant becomes fascinated by heights in what's called summit disease. This is a syndrome in which the ant is compelled to climb up the nearest plant, and at a very particular height, the fungus forces the ant to bite onto the Underside of a leaf in the death grip. The height is just the right height, given the temperature and humidity for the fungus to produce its spores.
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