Zombies. The first association of each horror genre fan is, of course, human corpses at a moderate stage of decay that walk through the streets of large metropolises for the nagging of the local population. But a few of us know that zombies populate the Earth with millions, although not as dramatic specimens - the fiery ants Solenopsis invicta.
South American flies are guilty
The source of the infection among these insects is actually the Phoridae flies, which originate from a small region in South America, where the fiery ant is born. After careful selection, flying insects attack the strongest and most viable specimens and lay their eggs in their bodies. The larva that hatches from this "love," eats the brain of the host ant that begins to behave like a classic zombie.
"There comes a moment when the ant just gets going and it's starting to go without purpose," says Rob Plaus, a researcher at the University of Texas. According to him, only two forests of flies can hold an antler under psychological control. "Their behavior resembles siege castles in the Middle Ages," he added.
The head falls
A month after hatching the egg, the head of the struck ant falls and a young fly is born, ready to attack new "slaves" for the benefit of their own people. A tricky tactic that some would call "biological colonialism." What's more, the behavior of the host ant completely changes under the impact and the needs of the little alien in her head. Here's where Ridley Scott's idea came from. But as the English say, the truth is stranger than fiction.
And this is not everything from the strange universe of the Ants world. The ordinary workers from the colonies of Argentine ants, which are spreading gradually all over the world, emit chemical signals alerting their sister-in-law: "I'm dead. Take me to the cemetery. " The problem is that these clients of the graveyard live, breathe and do their everyday work no worse than all of us. What is the secret of this strange chemical behavior?
The mystery is in chemical compounds
Professor Dong-Won Cho from the University of California at Riverside, who studies the unusually effective funeral practices of ants, believes that the mystery lies in the chemical compounds adjacent to the outer shell of the insects and warns: "Wait a minute! I'm not dead yet! " In the real death of the insect, they quickly decompose, leaving only the message of death. Then their sister-in-law immediately takes them away from the anthill, thus avoiding the spread of infections and pathogens.
The conclusion from this, according to Cho and his colleagues, is that the "sign of death" is not a scar that appears after its occurrence, but something that has been noted in the body since birth and stamped at last by the passing of the signal of life. There are studies to prove whether the same mechanism is valid among other animal species. For us, the reassurance that the strange laws of the insect world have dropped somewhere along the evolutionary path, and the only chance to see the zombie live is the screen.
Source: www.euroscientist.com , www.pixabay.com