Real-Life Zombies

IN THIS ARTICLE YOU'LL DISCOVER ...

• Some scientific truths behind zombie lore
• The horror of zombie ants
• How reanimated pig brains could help us better understand brain function

Hi I’m Dr. Sabrina Stierwalt, and I’m Everyday Einstein, bringing you Quick and Dirty Tips to help you make sense of science.

Maybe the zombie apocalypse starts with a virus or a supernatural event. Maybe the resulting zombies can move quickly but are more easily incapacitated, or maybe they're slow and can be only taken out by a blow to the brain. Are these zombies cunning? Or are they awkward and uncoordinated, as I would argue any proper zombie must be? 

Zombie lore may give us a lot of variety, but one thing every zombie scenario has in common is reanimation of the body after death. The body’s movements are slave to a brain that is no longer in control. But what do these differences matter? It's all just science fictional horror movie fodder, right? Well, we’ve previously discussed scientific studies on how fast a zombie-like virus could spread, as well as neurobehavioral disorders in humans that leave their sufferers mimicking some key zombie traits. And it turns out, science has even more to say about zombies. 

Zombie Carpenter Ants

In the Brazilian jungle, at a height of just about 10 inches off the ground, carpenter ants can be found with their jaws permanently locked on a leaf, frozen in a never-ending dance as an alien stalk grows through their head. These ants are the victims of ophiocordyceps unilateralis, also known as the zombie ant fungus. 

The fungus first enters an ant’s bloodstream as single cells, but those cells soon begin copying themselves and, importantly, building connections so that those individual cells can share nutrients. These connections set the ophiocordyceps fungus apart from other fungi that simply kill off their host and eventually form networks that wrap around the ant’s muscles.

In the Brazilian jungle, at a height of just about 10 inches off the ground, carpenter ants can be found with their jaws permanently locked on a leaf, frozen in a never-ending dance as an alien stalk grows through their head.

As the fungal network grows, the ant’s body succumbs to the fungus’s control. Interestingly, this network doesn’t appear to reach the ant’s brain. Entomologists are not sure whether the fungus releases chemicals that affect the ant’s...

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