A fearsome fungus

(this was an older post that I had saved, but forgot to post so the topic deals with older material)

Leiningan vs. the Ants did raise some good questions about what can be considered a moster, and more generally, what is it that we fear? There seems to be a consensus that fear comes out of the abnormal. Which in this case, includes a possible higher intelligence from such small creatures. As Kayla pointed out, ants themselves can be very intelligent, more so than we might initially give them credit for. In my opinion, their real genius shows when under attack from zombies.

That's right, zombies. When one of their own is infected, and shows signs of becoming a zombie, the worker ants recognize this and one will take the infected ant far away from the colony to avoid spreading it to the rest. This seems a very wise move for something so tiny, but ants are fairly smart. Perhaps we should look to them as leaders in an upcoming battle, one they've been fighting for years. As shown in the video below, there is a type of Cordycep fungus that inplants itself into an ant's brain, taking control of their motory functions and then forcing it's way through the "skull" of the ant and bursting forth spores that will infect other ants, driving them all mad.

Imagin: you're walking along, breathing in the fresh air of spring and suddenly you start to sneeze. "Damn," you think, "allergy season." What you don't realize is that the small spores now attached to the tiniest nose hair will soon make their way to your brain to TAKE CONTROL!!! It isn't some mutation or virus that will bring about a zombie apocalypse but a common fungus.