You haven’t seen how terrifying spiders can be
“Zombies - Zombies everywhere, no one to document.”
Your worst nightmare of being surrounded by walking dead monsters may or may not become true anytime soon but we’ve got some real zombie maniacs out of the insect world to haunt you in your dreams, to say the least!
From legends of a fungus that controls an ant’s brain & body to reproduce itself to the parasitic wasps that “zombify” those 8-legged crawlers (spiders). The insect world is filled with fascinating species with unique traits and abilities, enough to leave you flabbergasted!
Oh, how the mighty have fallen!
Starting with the story of my beloved spider we will explore how pop culture dominating zombies find their way in the world of small but mighty. It all starts with the wasp laying eggs on the spider’s back, shortly after the larvae hatch, they take control over the helpless insect, forcing the spider to build an unusual type of web that acts as a cocoon for the larva. Mission accomplished, the young wasp eats the slave spider and then settle in to pupate, eventually emerging as adult wasps.
Searching for an answer to how?
The research team working on finding answers to how does the puny wasp larva control a spider’s brain?
They found evidence that the wasps are hijacking the spiders’ moulting behaviour (To increase its size, the spider has to form a new, larger cuticle exoskeleton and shed its old one. This whole process is called moulting). They found a close relation between webs that the zombie spiders build for the wasps and the ones that healthy spiders build to protect themselves during the vulnerable process of moulting.
The researchers also noted that zombified spiders that had just built cocoon webs had high levels of a hormone called ecdysone in their bodies, which plays a vital role in the spider’s moulting cycle. The wasp larvae are believed to inject extra ecdysone into the creature, essentially tricking it into thinking it’s time to moult. In response, the spider builds that special, protective type of web — ultimately becoming a treat for its frail master.
So, wasps are the real culprit here I hear you say. No, the organism affecting the spider is actually a fungus which makes sure these processes happen at a superfast pace and the spider’s nervous system doesn’t have the resources and time to catch up to whatever is happening.
So what about the possibilities of a human zombie?
Very slim indeed. The human brain and it’s super high functioning capacity wouldn’t allow such trespassing at the hands of mere fungi. Add to the fact that moulting and stuff are not present in the human body.
So humans are safe, at least for now anyway!
