Ologies with Alie Ward - Neuroparasitology (NATURE ZOMBIES) with Matt Simon

Episode Date: November 1, 2023

What’s on your mind? ZOMBIES. The planet is full of mind-controlling foes, and “Plight of the Living Dead” author Matt Simon researched deep and traveled the world to document tales of fungus-controlled zombie ants, bellies and brains full of worms, wasp bunkers, decapitated ants, brutal stings, hapless cockroaches, the attraction of light, moonlit skinny dipping, and the philosophy of where I stop and you begin. The two of us also discuss the Last of Us, of course. Visit Matt Simon’s website and follow him on TwitterShop Matt Simon’s books including Plight of the Living Dead: What Real-Life Zombies Reveal about Our World – And OurselvesA donation went to the World Wildlife FundMore episode sources and linksSmologies (short, classroom-safe) episodesOther episodes you may enjoy: SPOOKTOBER episodes, Acarology (TICKS & LYME DISEASE) Quantum Ontology (WHAT IS REAL?), Invisible Photology (INVISIBILITY CLOAKS), Gustology (TASTE), Chiropterology (BATS),  Scotohylology (DARK MATTER), Dendrology (TREES), Mycology (MUSHROOMS), Myrmecology (ANTS), Felinology (CATS), Cicadology (CICADAS)Sponsors of OlogiesTranscripts and bleeped episodesBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, stickers, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter and InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter and InstagramEditing by Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio ProductionsTranscripts by Emily White of The WordaryWebsite by Kelly R. DwyerTheme song by Nick Thorburn

Oh, hey, it's your friend's nice dad who always pronounces your name wrong. Oops, Alli Wart, and welcome to the thrilling conclusion of Spooktober. Here it is. Let's turn our brains right over to Zombies, shall we? But actual natural zombies. So this guest, whoo, someone I met interviewing for a panel at the Beloved Natural History Museum of LA County, I was immediately thrilled to meet another high caliber dork, big dork, who spent his spare time researching our weird world. You're going to love him. He's a long

time science writer. You've likely already read his work in wired magazines, absurd creature of the week column. Perhaps you've enjoyed one of his many books such as The Wasp that brainwashed the caterpillar or plight of the living dead, what real life zombies reveal about our world in ourselves, or a poison like no other, which is his latest book. His books are really deeply researched. They're also hilarious. They're such a joy to read. I'm a really big fan of his and his plight of the living dead

came out a few years ago, so he was not expecting me in his inbox, but I reached out to him and was like, hey, buddy, hi, hi, remember me? And I was like, since you spent buddy, hi, hi, remember me? And I was like, since you spent years writing a book about zombie creatures and traveling all over the world to interview the best scientists across this wide range of species, may I beg you to talk about it on allergies? Since anologist is anyone studying something, and he was like, sure, dude, so my dream has

come alive. And he joined me from his recording studio slash closet in San Francisco and it was just a joy to delight in his encyclopedic brain and his very dry wit. We're gonna get right to the episode, but first thank you to everyone who submitted questions ahead of time via patreon.com slash allergies, it cost a buck a month to join. Thank you to everyone posting pictures of yourself in Allegy's March that you got from All of G's March.com. And thanks to the folks who leave reviews that you know I read on purpose, such as this one from KED98 who wrote Five Stars. Hi, Allie. I know you're reading this. I love every episode. More than I expect to every time I hit play, your decides remind me of how my brain likes to be too.

KED98, we probably have the same fungus. And with that, let's get into the business of neuro parasitology, the science and study of organisms who have been fiddled with in their domes. Again, this author studied this study with various people who study it from different angles and species and thus in the totally legit sense of the terminology,ologist, belongs on allergies.

So hunker down, get ready. For snake-headed club fungus, bellies of worms, brains of zombies, wasps, stings, hapless cockroaches, the attraction of light, moonlit skinny dipping, the philosophy of where I stop, and you begin decapitated ants, and the two of us discussing the last of us,

with author and gatherer of all facts, neuro parasitology, Matt Simon. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ These are bad. It is. At least terrible. Yeah, but we can at least talk about ants. It's not as terrible as it is France, honestly.

Yeah. Fuck. Bugs are fucked. Yeah. So fucked. Um, first thing we'll have you do if you could say your first one last name in the pronouns you use. Absolutely. My name is Matt Simon name in the pronouns used. Absolutely.

My name is Matt Simon. I go by he and him. So you are a science writer. You're very, very accomplished in this field. Several books under your belt. When you wrote your first book, did that spark the idea for your next book? Sure. Yeah.

It certainly did. The first book was kind of a roundup of weird stuff happening in the animal kingdom. And in that reporting and kind of gathering up those different creatures, I had come across several instances of parasites that have evolved to mind control their hosts. And I decided to serve a full-length book treatment, which is what this is. It is a deep dive into the science as to this weirdly pervasive phenomenon that has evolved many, many separate times across the tree of life. Parasites are more often than we think, actually mind controlling the hosts that they inhabit. So more parasites than we realize it's more than just cordicept sponges. Much more than cordicept there are worms that do this, there are wasps that do this,

bacteria. So this is, when I say that it's more common than we realize, this is more common than scientists realize. So this science of zombification isn't all that old. It's really the past couple of decades it's really gotten going. So they're finding more and more of these interactions between parasite and host.

And there's actually a lot of these that we are just totally unaware of. Matt says that these universes are called umwelts. Umwelts? It's a German word that means environment or surroundings as experienced by an organism. Now umwelts is a fun word, but not as fun as the companion term umgabung, which is an umwelt as seen or experienced by a different observer. So, socially, your neighbor Tim, who works at an insurance firm, might exist in a different umwelt than Cardi B, but her Instagram stories provide an entertaining umgum. The parasites are playing with senses of taste and with sight and with hearing and smell, we don't inhabit

the same universe that an ant does, right? So there might be much more subtle and complex manipulations by these parasites that we just don't even know. Is that in terms of like chemo-sensory cues that we just can't even detect? Can't even wrap our heads around. And it wasn't that long ago that like, people didn't understand how bats moved the world until fairly recently in human history.

There was a theory for a while, it was like 150 years that bats were actually feeling through the air with their wings, they were feeling by touch. And that was the wisdom for 150 years. And then they finally did good experiments to show that there's this thing called so not these bats sensing the world moving through their world in this completely alien way to humans at least. So it's like we are naturally self centered as people, some of us more than others. But I think as a species, we just don't fully comprehend these sensory worlds, these umvotes that these other creatures have.

I feel like as soon as science does figure out how something works in the animal kingdom, they're like, how can we weaponize this? Yes. Turn it, turn it against somebody. Yeah. How can we figure out how to duplicate this in some sort of militarized fashion? Gee, I wish we had one of those day machines. Let's go back to you a little bit.

Had you been taking notes in a nature journal since you were a child, did you want to be a field biologist and then there were too many shots you had to get? What's your origin story? It was mostly too much school. You know, you gotta go get your bachelors and on and on, to eventually get a PhD.

No, I've always been totally fascinated by the natural world. I spent a good amount of time of it as a kid, rambling through forests, my grandparents lived in the country, rattlesnakes and such. I was not bitten by arousenakes, but fascinated by them. So those sorts of things kind of set the stage for me and I kind of spent my 20s just wandering around aimlessly

as a freelance writer not really having much direction, which I guess a lot of people do in their 20s. But Matt loved science and is excellent at studying and communicating it. I got to wired in my late 20s and just started writing more about science and focused in on animals and did this call and called Observed Creature the Week that ran for a couple of years, right, profiled these weird evolutionary tricks in the natural world that turned into the first book, the second book, and then I just wrote a third book about microplastics, which is entirely different and entirely more depressing. And we don't even need to talk about it here.

Just forget I mentioned it. So ignore, completely ignore his new and lauded book, a poison like no other, how microplastics corrupted our planet and our bodies. Forget we even linked it in the show notes, along with his other books about weird animal stuff. I feel like zombification of cockroaches is somehow gonna be more uplifting

than that book about microplastics, right? Weirdly yes. Yeah, I can guarantee you uplifting than that book about microplastics, right? Weirdly yes. Yeah, I can guarantee you. I'd rather think about, you know, ants getting zombified. Well, then I think we'll move away from the true horrors of microplastics for September and go into lighter horrors such as zombies in the real world. Okay, so when you started to tackle this subject, you already had some

notes and some ideas from running your first book. So, did you have to figure out a list of how many neuro parasites or peristatoids? I guess let's start there. The difference between something being a parasite and being peristatoid. Is there a difference? something being a parasite and being peristotoid. Is there a difference? So a parasite is an organism, some sort that can be like a virus, or we're talking about ants getting zamified, we're talking about a fungus that invades their body

and feeds on their energy and eventually kills them in these really, really elaborate ways. And then a peristotid is one of these parasites that ends up killing its host in the end. So in the case of the ant, obviously, the most famous example, but we have lots of examples of wasps that do this in really horrific ways, two cockroaches and caterpillars.

The as parasite, a general kind of energy exploiter, parasitoid, one that actually ends up killing its host. caterpillars, be as parasite, a general kind of energy exploiter, um, parasite toy, one that actually ends up killing its host. Oh, so one is lethal and one just keeps you alive for as long as it can to drain off of you. Yeah. So I think of a tick as a parasite, right? Feeds off of your blood, hopefully it doesn't give you Lyme's disease, um, but drops off and goes about its merry way without killing you.

Mm-hmm. It's merry way. It's like, yeah, but it was so good. It was so nice. Great meeting, exchanging fluids. See you later. And if you're thirsty for more on ticks, Lyme disease and other acrologically born illnesses, we have this great mega episode linked in the show notes below about ticks that will just have you check in, your crevices forever. But back to Matt.

So he had been researching and writing a column for Wired called the Observed Creature of the Week, but had this giant spreadsheet of horrifying critters that many people would call assholes. But others would say are just behavioral manipulators. You get into conversations with scientists and just reading through the literature and you find really like classes

of these behavioral manipulators, different kinds of worms, but there might be hundreds of different species of a particular worm that manipulate different hosts in, you know, subtly different ways. These are extremely, interestingly evolved behaviors and manipulations. So yes, it was a matter of finding a list of scientists

who would bother talking to me, and some of which I actually was able to visit in the field, but a whole lot of reading literature, so much literature. And in a fight, this is fun to read, though, it's not like organic chemistry. Sorry to organic chemistry. All right, don't tell Matt, but the debut novel of Bonnie Garmus,

Lessons in Chemistry, has been a New York Times bestseller since its release in 2022. And it's about a woman who studies abiotgenesis, the origins of life via carbon-containing compounds, which is organic chemistry. And it was instantly snapped up into a TV show for Apple, for which Dr. Tegan Wall of the WGA strike episode was a supervising producer. If you remember that. And I think organic chemist searches are doing fine at the library, but from the stacks and the journals and the notebooks and the interviews to tucking his pants in a socks and hopefully crevice checking at some point. Matt got Sunburn and Dust dusty alongside the researchers.

So we all know about the opio-corticeps fungus that manipulates and that's what the last of us is based on. But there are all sorts of scientists all over the world working on these less well-known interactions between parasite and host. So I was able to visit a scientist who took me on a hike through the Mexico looking for horse hair worms that do crazy things to crickets. I was able to bother these people for their time and energy, not on like a parasite actually. Can you talk to me about horse hair worms as long as we're there? Wow, you've never seen anything come out of a butt like a horse hairworm, have you? It's, it's an experience. And I was lucky enough to see them both in the wild on that hike in New Mexico and in the lab that I went back to with this researcher. So this guy was

nice enough to take me out into the wild. And we were looking for bodies of water, which is not a place that you typically find crickets, right? But we eventually came upon this cattle bucket trough. It wasn't really a trough, it was more circular. I don't know anything about farming. It was where cows drink. I think it's a stock tank. Just in case you're listening while offering new tractor and screaming it's a stock tank.

And we looked into here and we threw the water and we found these wiggling pale colored worms horse hair worms. They're like I think I'm just going to the book is like al dente angel hair pasta So where did these worms come from? It is a very interesting and Horrifying story especially if you are the cricket So what happens is a cricket's doing its thing, it's hopping along, eating basically whatever it can on the ground, they are not picky eaters.

So they will typically eat something like a mosquito. And the mosquito has these larvae, these eggs of this parasite called the horsehair worm in that body. So the cricket snacks on this mosquito, not knowing that it is stuffed with parasite eggs like cheese in a crab wrangoon. Yum yum yum yum, worth it. And then once the cricket consumes that,

those eggs hatch into larvae, work their way through the tissues of the cricket, which I can imagine feels particularly good. And grow. Sometimes many of these can actually grow in the abdomen of a single cricket. One of them is actually quite interesting. One of them will actually snake its tail

through the cricket's body and around its brain. And the thinking there is that it is releasing some sort of chemical to then mind control the cricket. That mind control entails jumping into a body of water, where again a cricket is not meant to be on a kind of drowning. So once that cricket hits the water, the worm knows to escape because it's actually poking part of its body out of the excess skeleton of the cricket. It can taste that water. And once it is in that water, that's when it makes its break. And it wiggles out of the cricket. This very, very long worm.

And we were actually able in the lab to, he just, like you do, he just wouldn't grab a couple of crickets that had a bunch of horsehair worms in their bodies, toss them in a little pan of water, and very quickly, these worms worms several of them would just squirm out. And the cricket, you would think, well, that's it for the cricket, right? Like what's the point of living? Yeah, embarrassing too. You don't need to see this.

You think that would be the death of the cricket. It is not actually the vast majority of them survive. Sometimes again, several of these worms coming out of their bodies in this really horrific fashion. So where this gets extra interesting is around this idea that the scientist was what's on me about called the mafia hypothesis. So we know like the old shakedown like if you don't pay us money, something bad could happen to your shop. We would hate for that sort of thing to happen by our hand or otherwise. So there's a theory actually that the cricket wants to get rid of those worms. So as the parasite is in its body, it is sucking up energy and nutrients from

that cricket. It's quite a burden. There might be a component here that the cricket actually is maybe partly behaviorally modified into jumping into water, but also to a certain degree would want to to relieve itself of the burden of these worms, especially given that it can go on to survive perfectly fine. It is not, I can imagine, a fun experience for the cricket to go through. Please. Just sleep. Okay, bye bye. But it hops so long only to probably eat another mosquito and just more worms and then do it all over again. And well I know that you want all the answers buttoned up tidily. A 2021 article titled new definitive host Record for Nematomorpha in Nebraska, Shrugs. The life cycle and ecology of the horsehair worm in Nebraska remain unknown.

But don't let that deter you from finishing the article, which includes tasty tidbits such as, the male clowagel opening is surrounded inside and outside by bristles that bifurcate deeply. And adhesive warts are lacking. Do scientists know what part of the brain the worm is wrapping around to poke at, to make it say water, or, I mean, obviously, if it's like, you know what might help,

get these things out of my butt as some water. But any idea what's happening in the brain? With the worms, it's not necessarily like poking into the brain. I think it's getting the proximity of the brain? With the worms, it's not necessarily poking into the brain. I think it's getting the proximity of the brain. They're still trying to work out what the chemicals are involved here. But generally speaking, across these parasites, we're looking at things like very reasonable, well-known steps, dopamine, GABA, serotonin, and these sorts of things that

serve very different functions and these different creatures across the tree of life and they do of course in the human brain. In the case of the crickets and the horsehair worms, studies like the 2011 behavioral ecology journal article, water seeking behavior in worm infected crickets and reversibility of parasitic manipulation, found that it wasn't necessarily a great thirst for water that got the crickets to soak their butts, but rather a modification of phototaxis or an attraction to light. And given that these horsehair worms tend to taste water and unfurl out of their hosts nocturnally, they think the glimmering light of the moon on water may be what gets the poor souls to just finally rid themselves of their squirmy burdens via a moonlit skinned it.

But it is a wildly complex manipulation that has evolved again so many times, independently. That's what's so fascinating to me about this is that it seems that this is just a tendency for biology to mind control. It actually makes a lot of sense because it's actually an excellent strategy if you're trying to reproduce and pass your genes along to the next generation. Do they find that it occurs in all kinds of biomes and environments? Like you talked to me about New Mexico and I think of a very arid place and looking for water must be difficult for horse air worms. But does it happen more in extreme environments where resources or certain habitats are scarce

or is this everywhere? As far as I can tell, it's mostly everywhere. So again, because the science is so new, and because these interactions are so complex, it's not just really just beginning to work their way through how much of this is out there where it is. So you know, it's in New Mexico. There are actually species of aphiocorticeps that do this sort of manipulation in North Carolina in addition to the famous ones

that we know of around the tropics. This is very common among worms that infect crustaceans in lakes around the world, doesn't matter where those lakes are. It is so, so pervasive. And again, we're just the tip of the iceberg because we're stuck in our own umveilt here. We're kind of flailing in a sense that we only really know our spectrum of visible light, right? Or the sounds that we can hear, taste that we can taste, and smells that we can smell. There's a much more out there I can guarantee you. Well, speaking of light,

what other ways are the brains controlled? Is it through electrical impulses? Is it through the amount of light they're getting? Is it neurochemicals? Any idea other ways that they're telling the brain to do different things? I think a really good example here is these worms called can't the sephalins.

These go after crustaceans known as amphipods in freshwater lakes. amphipods. There are over 9,000 species on the books, and I did not know they existed until now. The rude, but they live in water, mostly, and their name means that they got feet on all sides of their body, and they look like stumpy shrimp, but tiny, and sometimes they answer to the name, scud, when they're feeling up up to it and aren't being turned into aquatic zombies. So this is a super fascinating

behavior change because it depends on the life cycle of a particular account that's Eiffelon. So they will either want to get into a fish or a bird to complete their life cycle. So they get into the body this little tiny crustacean, it's got little tiny hooks, it's actually kind of cute, and a sickle kind of way, if it makes sickles in front of its face. It's harmless, but it ingests these worms, and the worm then needs to somehow steer it into a bird or a fish, which live obviously in different parts of a lake. So depending on the species, if it wants to guide the amphipod into a bird, it'll actually guide it toward the light. Run to the light, baby!

Up toward the surface, where it's more likely to get eaten by bird and complete its life cycle. But the ones that manipulate these crustaceans into fishes, they'll actually keep them away from the surface. They don't want to get eaten by birds because that's a dead end, and they're not going to be able to reproduce in that organism. So they'll keep them in kind of shallower depths, but out in the open where fish are more likely to consume them. So when we're talking about behavioral manipulation, I think it's really important to consider these as vehicles. So these parasites have in a sense

extended their own bodies into the body of an organism. So it's not only controlled the behavior of this poor little crustacean to move either toward the surface or into the open to getting by a fish, it's assuming it's oomphill in a certain way, right? Like it kind of has eyes that it's

using by way of the poor little amphipod. Just a side note, Matt writes in his book that this behavioral manipulation was discovered in 1969 when two scientists were trying to get amphipod samples in a lake and some of the creatures clung desperately to their leg hairs and the researchers are like, these ones are weird. Let's take them back to the lab. Let's get to know. And according to the 2006 study, altered host behavior and brain serotonergic activity caused by a canthosophylens, evidence for specificity, amphipods, injected with serotonin

to split the same attraction to light as infected subjects. So, serotonin did it. And maybe psych meds can lift the darkness. So, serotonin did it, and maybe psych meds can lift the darkness. Thanks, serotonin. These neurotransmitters that we know full well how they work in humans, but they have until they have different functions and other animals, and I think the science now is progressing into learning more exactly how these wasps or worms or fungi, however you want to pronounce it, are actually fully manipulating these creatures because it is such an intricate and elaborate process.

What about those little critters that eat a fish's tongue? Oh, yeah, tongue-any-isopods. Those are behavioral manipulators, but I think maybe, in certain ways, more horrifying. These are little, not always little, kind of big, but they'll get into a fish's mouth in the ocean, eat its tongue, and then replace the tongue with itself so the fish can keep eating, and the pair as I can keep feeding on its energy. Nobody's gonna know.

They're gonna know. Yeah, happy Halloween. First off, how do scientists feel about the term zombie? When you approach them about this book, which has the best title ever, Plight of the Living Dead, were they like enough with the zombie stuff? Are they like whatever gets people to care about or research?

It depends on the crankiness of the scientist. But like anything, informally, it is totally fine to call these things zombies. Zombie is a difficult term to define in popular culture because there's so many different kinds of zombies. Now they'll say it is behavioral manipulation on part of the parasite influencing its host, which is a, it's a mouthful. Let's just, let's just call them zombies, but is it a brain eating human that rose from the dead? No, but it is zombie-esque. Just a wee background on this from the 2018 paper, the Undead in Culture and Science. So the English word zombie emerged over 200 years ago, but it comes from the older Haitian French zombie, most likely originating

in West Africa. But zombie persons are part of Haitian folklore. They're usually someone who's had a short illness and then dies, is entombed, and then is brought back to life via witchcraft to serve the person who resurrected them, kind of like a finder's fee, I guess. And as you can imagine, from dying and reanimating as a corpse, usually zombies are pretty wiped out. They have a loss of coordination or ataxia. They're not very chatty. And, well, a lot of horror movies took their cue from Haitian folklore,

a BBC episode of Planet Earth inspired the video game and subsequent hit TV series The Last of Us, starring my future best friend, Pedro Pesco. And this game and series kind of launched the spores of zombie animals into all of our brains, speaking of. Let's talk about Cortis Epps. First off, do you watch The Last of Us, did you play the game, how did you feel about it? Having written this book.

I have not played the game, but I watched the series. I thought it was fantastic. Even though there weren't that many zombies, it was more of a people story, which is fine, people are great. But I thought they did really interesting things with the Auffio Corticeps. I'm not sure if this was true in the game as well.

But I got to, if you remember, there was a point where they're looking out on this vista and there's this mob of zombies that have been parasitized by this fungus and they're kind of rippling like the way that they're moving and they're saying like, oh, they're somehow connected because the fungus is growing throughout everything and everybody. That's really, that doesn't happen with off you in real life, but it is like if you heard of like micro-risal networks in the forest. So these fungi that actually connect trees and exchange nutrients and things like that. There's this constant communication underground. We cover some of this in both the mythology and the dendrology episodes, but yes,

tree fungus friendship is real and it's beautiful. It's interesting thing that they just threw in there, I thought it was fascinating, but not actually what Alfio does in real life. Do you know if they had any fungus consultants? I mean, they must have, right? Yeah, the guy, David Hughes that I interview in the book and I went and visited him at Penn State for the book, but he's the guy. He's like, if you want to know about Ophioc, go to David Hughes. If you ever sit next to a doctor, David Hughes at a party, and he says he studies fungus to not let him change a subject.

Rather, tell him you love his 2010 paper, Ancient Death Grip Leaf Scars, Reveal and Fungal Parasticism. Or let's also not sleep on the 2021 hit, an agent-based model shows zombie ants exhibit search behavior. And this episode here is an overview of a lot of different zombie animals, but maybe next year I'll camp out on Dr. Hewzlan, and I'll ask him to talk to me specifically about this genus, which means snake club headed. For now, Matt, who has spent

much time asking Dr. Hewz and his colleagues, lots of questions for his book. We'll fill us in. I do want to know about Ophio, but because you've studied so many zombies, I'm coming to you. But let's get into it because I feel like that's one that really has captured people's attention. Can you give me a rundown of what afeo the fungus does? And which is it just ants or does it get anyone else like bees or hornets? So a aphiocortiseps, this genus that again has hundreds of different species that each specialize in a single species of ant because these manipulations are so complex. You'll hear about it infecting caterpillars, and in fact this is used in traditional Chinese medicine.

So it infects the caterpillar in the ground, manipulates the caterpillar to point its body upwards, vertically in the dirt. The fungus kills the caterpillar, grows out of its body as a stalk that comes out of the ground. It's pretty cool. That's not a particularly complicated manipulation

because caterpillars, I love them. They're not particularly complicated creatures for all their charms. But so what Ophiote does with ants is by necessity wildly complicated, so think about where an ant colony is. It is a bunch of sisters working really hard to further the colony ants do not like intruders as you might have known from stepping on a colony

They have certain ways to detect smaller intruders, so smaller insects, that sort of thing. So they have this thing called social immunity, which is each ant is a worker, but also a century that is sniffing out trouble coming into the colony. So if you have a sister that is acting weird, maybe stumbling around, they're not sentimental about this. They will pick up that worker, drag her to a graveyard and dump her because

there could be something wrong. So for disease that she has, that she can very easily spread through the whole colony because these are ants in very close contact with one another. And that is a major problem for a parasite like osteocortisps. So what it has evolved over many, many generations is this intricate manipulation of an individual ant. So it begins as a spore that sticks to the cuticle of an ant, the exoskeleton.

At the same time that it's building up these enzymes that are kind of rotting away the exoskeleton. At the same time that it's building up these enzymes that are kind of rotting away that exoskeleton, it's also building up pressure. So it's the pressure equivalent to what's in a 747 jet tire. So what happens is the enzyme weakens the cuticle, it explodes through it because of that pressure and then injects that fungus into the ants body. The ant is pretty much done for at this point, but the issue here is that if the fungus were to grow thoroughly throughout its body, you would assume that there would be

some sort of behavioral problem with the ant. I don't know, I would feel a little weird if this was happening to my body and start acting strange. Going to convulsions would probably be the least of your worries. So if that were the case, some other sister would see that, pick up that ant, dump her in the colony, and that would be the end of that fungus's life cycle. So the way it has evolved is, all right, well, don't want that to happen. It is somehow growing not only through the ant's body, but growing through its muscles, and actually ripping apart muscle fibers

and growing in between it. The scientists that I've talked to David Hughes for the book, I have a quote in the book, I have him saying that it might be that we're actually seen a sort of puppet master at work, that if the fungus is growing through the actual muscles, it might actually be controlling individual muscles. It's also growing around the brain, like the worm is kind of getting

in proximity to the brain of a cricket, but never infiltrates the brain itself, and it is dosing that brain with chemicals. So all the while this is happening, again, growing through individual muscle fibers, the ant is not acting strange because that is the end of the life cycle, if it is found out. So it does this for 20, 21 days, growing, growing, growing through the body of the ant until the time comes where it wants to finish that anoth. Its vehicle is no longer useful to it. So it orders the ant to walk about 10 inches off the ground and bite down on the underside of a leaf. So it's hanging upside down,

biting into the vein of that leaf. It then kills the ant, dispatches it, and then grows out of its mouth, and then further attaches the mandibles to the leaf vein. And then grows is that kind of characteristic stock out the back of the ants head releases more spores hits more of the colony soldiers and workers below and then that's how it keeps fetching over and over and over. It is like consistently 10 inches off the ground where the humidity and temperature is just right for the growth of the fungus. How does the fungus know? How to do this? Well, it doesn't.

It has evolved over many, many generations by trial and error to get it just right like this. But that's the weirdness of the cycle itself through an ant that goes on to infect more in that colony. It's even a weirder. So they're finding that not all of these ants that are infected with Othio do that. Some of them actually wander outside of the colony.

They just walk in a straight line as far as they can and then do the same thing where they buy a leaf but far away from that individual colony. The theory is that the fungus is actually trying to get to other colonies because if it somehow wipes out that whole colony, it doesn't want to because it wants to keep going if it somehow wipes out that whole colony, it doesn't want to, because it wants to keep going if it kills off its own entirely.

It's not good. But it's like the fungus is sending out scouts, right? So like try to infect nearby colonies and to perpetuate its cycle over and over and over. Again, the fungus isn't thinking about this, but this is the majesty of evolution and natural selection. This is just a system that evolved in lockstep The fungus isn't thinking about this, but this is the majesty of evolution and natural selection. This is just a system that evolved in lockstep with the, you know, the severe measures

that ants have to keep themselves healthy and to keep the colony safe. The fungus is like, oh, that's, that's cute. How about this? Someone in their body, muscle tissues, mind, and then dispatch you in this totally creepy way that will someday be immoralized in a video game and do you? And there's no chemo sensory clues for 21 days that an ant is being puppet mastered by a fungus. So here's, right, this is where it's extra interesting, is that ants inhabit this sensory

space that is totally foreign to you and I who are, you know, we have great eyesight, it's a pretty good hearing, but we're largely visual creatures. Ants are using pheromones to communicate. So while that fungus is growing through the ants body, it has to somehow make sure that it doesn't smell weird, right? It's a completely foreign substance,

taking up like half of the ants total body weight, which is a lot of fungus in an ant. It is somehow evading detection not only by manipulating the behavior of the ant, but somehow manipulating its scent. So the sisters don't smell something strange and throw that invader into a garbage heap outside the column. Okay. If they throw sick members in a garbage heap outside the colony, do the sick members ever

make it back? Or are they usually so almost far gone, there's no way they can make it back from the graveyard? Yeah. I mean, if you're that far gone, you're that sick. It's brutal, right? Yeah. I love ants, but that's no way to treat your sisters. She's the least exciting to look at.

So she can be out. But it's for the good of the colony, right? So they don't want some sort of virus, bacteria, fungus to run wild throughout the colony. I feel like these sisters are more than happy to make the sacrifice. They live to further the colony and to further the Queen's reign and they want to make sure that nothing can interrupt that. Yeah, they're like, take me out. If I start being weird, just bye-bye. Uncertainment actually dumped me in a graveyard. Yeah. I hear that they even kind of employ the older sisters to take them to the graveyard in case they die on the way.

Yeah, it makes... I just... I love this stuff. It's so goddamn clever, but not intentionally or consciously clever, right? It's just that evolution thinks this stuff up, I'm anthropomorphizing it. It's thinking this stuff up because it is solving problems for these organisms. In the case of the fungus, it needs to solve the problem that it's going to get found out if it's not careful. It wasn't that, you know, five million years ago, off-heal course steps showed up like this, all of a sudden. It was a step-by-step process.

It got better and better and better at not getting detected and better and better, better at positioning these ants, tenages off the ground with a temperature and humidity or perfect for its development. It was piece by piece and it has landed on what is in 2023, a super interesting thing for us humans to look at and put into video games and TV shows. What has been happening for a very long time? Mm-hmm.

Did you ever get to see this in person? Do they grow colonies to test things or how is all of this info gathered? When I went to the lab at Penn State, they have colonies there. I couldn't see an infection in progress, but he brought out a bunch of ants that had the stock screen out of their heads,

super fascinating and horrifying, really. So it's actually done, and this is why the science is kind of just getting started. It's done by field work. You've got to go out and you've got to sit in a damn jungle for weeks on it. If it's a 21-day growth cycle for this fungus and an ant, you've got to go out there and you've got to put flags in the ground. You've got to track individual ants. You've got to look at trails and things like that. So it is a truly amazing fieldwork on the part of these scientists. And I had also mentioned that they have been finding these sort of fungus in

North Carolina, which at face-flight doesn't make sense. Off you is in a tropical setting, it's got the right humidity and temperature, 10 inches off the ground. It's got leaves all the time that don't fall off those trees that it's able to bite onto, where the North Carolina already gets extra clever is that it doesn't order its ants to bite down on the vein of the leaf. It orders them to bite onto twigs in a tree because if the winter comes out around it, it hasn't completed its life cycle leaves can fall and it doesn't fall, it stays there and comes out the next spring or summer. So it's just, it's weird and weird, the more that scientists go out in the field and find these sorts of things. But yes, they can somewhat replicate it in the lab,

but it's nothing compared to being out in the actual nature. I mean, how big is an ants brain? Like a size of a pinhead? It's minuscule. But so it's a fungus, right? It's growing as this sort of network through the ants body. These are very, very small scales, and it's not like it's an easy thing to take over, right? An ant brain may be small, but its social

behavior and interactions are extraordinarily complex. So just the fact that it's been able to evolve this not only once, but evolve to target individual species for each individual species of fungus is truly so. Okay, so an ant noggin has a quarter of a million brain cells, but it's still only 0.1 micro liter, which if you're like that number means nothing to me, same. So according to the B-B-B-B calculations, that is one million times smaller than your brain. Give or take several thousand ant brains because I don't know what you're working with up

there. And I see corticeps in supplements a lot, like brain boosters and energy boosters in completely different corticeps. That's probably the caterpillar one that I was talking about. It's probably very expensive. I've never used this supplement, but that stuff is very rare, or it's fake. I don't know, I just go to a doctor, right? I have the doctor tell you what's wrong with you,

don't take a fungus as a supplement. And one reason you might not wanna take Ophiocortis supplements is because it costs more than gold. But scientists have been able to cultivate another species via insect hosts in a lab. They say the fatty or the better. And the compound molecular biologists are after something called corticeptin,

which some studies have shown to stimulate the immune system while also being anti-inflammatory. However, studies are mixed, opinions are still out, I'm not a doctor, there's still a lot of research to be done. So dive into the library before you bank on a zombie fungus to save your life. Speaking of research. You know, I know the bibliography in your book is dazzling.

It's so exhaustive. Did you ever talk to any scientists who named their zombie subjects after movies or zombie lore? I do have a really good species name from the book. This is one of the acanthacephyl and worms. This is the genus's microfallus, which is tiny penis. And they're worms, and I guess they look like tiny penis, but all worms in a sense look like penises

to one degree or another, I don't know. I guess, but there's some worms that are like 30 meters long. That is true. So I don't know, I guess it's all relative. It is all, it is true. So then within this genus, there's a species called microfallus, Hoffmani, named after

somebody named Hoffman. So it's tiny penis Hoffman. I don't know who this person was. It was a gag that they were in on, but I find that purely hilarious. Maybe it was an academic feud. There are a lot of those out there. So it's very local. I actually went out of my way to try to tack it down for the book, but I couldn't find any information on who did this to poor

Hoffman. Maybe they scrubbed the internet. Maybe. They're like, just get rid of it. I searched way too hard for even the tiniest mention of a science feud. They could lead to such brutal taxonomic retribution.

But I came up with nothing except that microfellas Huffmani was once called microfellas ward 100% true. I don't know, I guess it's all relative. Let's move on. Okay. Wasps that sit on top of a cockroach and use its antenna as reins. This is a thing. This is a thing.

I feel like I'm a broker at this point. It gets even weird. So yeah, this is a jewel wasp and I was actually able to see this happen in a lab and it was a full tilt horrifying. So a jewel wasp is much, much smaller than a cockroach, which is its host. I needed to understand the scale, so I enjoyed some photographs of this beautiful, metallic green slender killer with its sad hapless beefy victim, and I've never wanted to soothe or

protect a cockroach more. But the size difference is like if a German shepherd was attacked by a corky who wrote its back Injecting it in the brain with a butt knife and when you are much much smaller than your host you have trouble Overwhelming it. So what happens is that it's it's in like a flash and the blink of an eye the loss will kind of sander up to the cockroach Leap on it and drive its stinger in between its two front legs. And this paralyzes the two front legs, so the cockroach can't bat away what's coming next, which is the loss pulls out its stinger and jams it through the cockroach's neck and feels around in the cockroach's brain with its stinger for two very specific spots where it injects venom. It then pulls out its stinger from the brain surgery and steps back and the cockroach

instead of freaking out and attacking the wasp as I would try to do it. It just kind of stands there and it obsessively grooms itself. This might have something to do with part of the venom component being dopamine, which is involved in grooming and insects like the cockroach. So while the cockroach is occupied, the wasp runs off and finds a burrow and comes back to the cockroach, bites off its to antennae and drinks its blood,

and then grabs onto the nub of the antennae and drags... I guess drags isn't really the right word because it's so much smaller, but kind of guides the cockroach toward the burrow. And the cockroach instead of flying away, freaking out, comes along willingly, and just kind of saunters over to the burrow. The jams it in the burrow comes inside with it, and lays a single egg on its belly, gets out of the burrow, and covers it up with rocks to imprison the cockroach.

So yeah, you can see what's coming. So what happens is the egg hatches into a larvae, begins drinking the juices of the cockroach, eventually naws through its excess galatin and gets inside the cockroaches. Belly grows bigger and bigger and bigger on its nutrients, and at some point decides to dispatch the cockroach, consume the rest of its body, and then emerge from the burrow as a fully nourished adult. It is like the only thing that makes me feel kind of okay with what's happening to the cockroach is maybe that it's so out of it from the sting to the brain in two spots.

And it's brain that it doesn't know what's happening, but I really cannot imagine a more horrific way to go. And so again, like off your car stuff involves this super complex interaction between a fungus and and why can't the jewel was just sting a cockroach to death and lay an egg on it? Well, by locking it alive in a burrow is tomb, really. It provides a steady source of fresh food for its young. That is not, the food is not rotting, so it's better nutritionally. It's like a little takeout meal

that it always has to kind of nib at. And yeah, it's this, it almost makes you feel sorry for cockroaches. I'm not quite there, but I could see how some people might. I'm trying to love cockroaches. I really am. This makes me more sympathetic to them, for sure. What brought the sun, you're trying to live cockroaches?

I'm trying to, because it's not fair that I don't. I love almost every other bug out there. I've learned to appreciate wasps. And I have yet to do a cockroach episode, but they're, they're the one bug that I just don't want anywhere near me unless they're straight from a terrarium and they've been eating like organic bananas their whole lives. I think it's because I've seen so many, like eating trash, but I eat, I mean, we eat the same pizza.

That was my pizza a second before I dropped it on the sidewalk. I see, you know what I mean? I know I need to give them a place in my heart once I get over the gag reflex. Yeah, I'm with you, I'm with you. Thanks for listening. What about traditional hawk wasps? So this happens, does this tend to happen mostly in arthropods?

Yes, so the tarantula wasp is the hawk wasp is super fascinating. It's not in the book per se. It is not really a zombie, well, I guess kind of maybe it is. It's got maybe the worst sting on planet Earth, at least as humans feel it. I just saw years ago, right, interview to guy who got stung by one of these was and he said literally the only thing you can do is to lie down and scream. That is the only way you're going to get through this. It passes. It's not a very long-lived sting, but just like buckle up by the cup.

This is going to be a rough ride. It is so excruciating. I know what you're thinking. What about the bullet-ant sting? Your brain says, as was so colorfully recalled in the Murmurkology episode with Dr. Terry McLinn, who has been stung by one. I've had several students intentionally get themselves stung by bullet ants because they wanted to know what it felt like. And? And? And it really hurt.

What did they do? What kind of reactions happened? Well, they just, they just scream their heads off and then use all kinds of cursing. You are working over them! No! Bang, don't take them, Chris! No! So I've worked with bullet ants, I've published a few papers on them, and I've only been stunned by them once, and that was in the lab when I was being dumb.

And so it's possible to work with them and not get stung if you just treat them with respect and understand how they behave. Well, hello, what happened? What happened? Tell me everything. you were in the lab. You got stung by a bullet and where how how? So I was in the lab and I needed to weigh this ant because I was putting We're doing experiments with microbes in their guts and so To weigh the ant I needed to put it in a container And weigh the ant in the container, then you subtract the weight of the container.

But I realized that when I weighed the cup, it didn't have a lid on it. And I was like, oh, I need to weigh a cup with a lid. But I wasn't thinking that that cup that had the lid on it was the one that had the ant that I was weighing in it. Oh, no. I just wasn't thinking. And so the moment I got the lid off, yes if you haven't already now would be a good time to cover the ears of your children or my mom You know, it just got me right on the tip of my finger and I was like fuck fuck fuck fuck

And I's floating and like somewhere in the balance room, it was roaming around meanwhile So I have like like this, you know, sophomore in college, I'm showing her how to do this experiment for the rest of the summer that she sees this. It was like, oh my god, it was so bad. It was really, really bad. But how does it compare to the blue, black, amber-winged beast of the Tarantula Hawk Wasp? Okay, well, there's this bug guy, his name's Justin Oshmit, who apparently is cursed and has been stung by just every painful thing.

Who better to formulate the Schmidt pain index? Literally no one, because no one wants to go through that. So we all trust Justin's accounts. So Oshmit says that the Tarantula Hawk sting feels like, quote, a running hair dryer that has just been dropped into your bubble bath. But that fades after a few minutes. The bullet is answering, however, he describes as pure, intense, brilliant pain that can last

up to 12 hours. But the point is, just don't piss off a tarantula hawk wasp. My bib is. Like, this wasp did not evolve to cause us pain, right? It's been a really beautiful wasp it goes after tarantulas. It just it stings the the bj's a sound of them and it's big enough to where it can actually drag away the tarantula and put it in a burrow. So it doesn't have to do this complex behavioral manipulation that the jewel wasp has to.

But I would not go anywhere in anyone. It's in the desert in the southwest just just if you see a lost, walk the other way. Yeah, I've seen them in real life and they're gorgeous. But I get excited because that means there's tarantulas around. Oh yeah, this is what I'm an endorecy person by the way. P.S. recently I was on a hike in the Santa Monica mountains and I saw tarantula in the wild

and it was the most thrilling celebsiting I've ever seen in LA. And in the late summer, mansbiders go lumbering about to brave and horny, and I got to witness one with my wide eyes. Anyway, back to other scary things. Like, if you can turn into a fungus zombie, which was on the vulnerable minds of patrons Jen Squirrel Alvarez, fiberglass, Holly Giorgio, Emily Burns, Kai and Kishimoto, Dave Brewer and Mitch.

Can any of these, like cordyceps, can it infect humans? Or is it just mammals or like, no, we're too warm? Don't worry about it. We are in luckily no danger here. So there have been reports of,

you can get infected by a fungus. Fine, like a foot fungus, right? It's a nail fungus infection. Not in your brain, it's not manipulating your behavior. These are so specific in their manipulations, that there's just no way, short of, I don't know, 10, 15 million years of very specific evolution where the fungus somehow evolves away from ants and into humans. But why would it, right? Like ants are so abundant

on planet Earth, it's just this constant massive food source for these fungi to actually do their thing. So no, do not worry. We of course as humans do have behavioral. So, no, do not worry. We, of course, as humans, do have behavioral manipulating parasites, but fungus is not one of them. Last of us, I think, is a great rendition of what it might happen. But honestly, I feel like it's so much more fascinating what it's actually doing to ants versus what theoretically could do to humans. I want to get to those questions about humans. Yeah. So let's ask some questions from patrons. Can we?

May we? Love it. Nice. Okay. But before we get there, a quick detour to donate to a cause chosen by Mr. Simon, which is the world wildlife fund, which works in over a hundred countries to conserve and restore biodiversity, to reduce humanity's environmental footprint, and to ensure the sustainable use of natural resources

to support current and future generations. Find out more at worldwildlife.org and that donation was made possible by sponsors of all of these. Okay, let's see exactly what's on your minds. Okay, Greg Wallach, Lila Leiko, Earl of Grammolkin, Tiger Gary, and Cynthia B. Want to know about toxoplasmosis? Greg asked, does toxoplasmosis turn a person into a crazy cat lady like it does with rats? Lila Laco wants to know, do toxoplasmosis infections really change people's actions and personalities

or is that flam flam? Any idea? You create questions and this is a very fascinating case of a parasite that is probably in some way, some subtle ways manipulating human behavior. So toxic plasma, this is a microbe that does not belong in humans. Life cycle actually goes between rats and cats. So in order to complete its life cycle within a rat or a mouse, it needs to get eaten by a cat. And to do that, it actually manipulates the behavior of a rodent to not only not be afraid of cats, but to actually be attracted to their urine. That survival technique on account of that leading to getting eaten very quickly.

But this is just like aphiote is mind controlling ants, which is like those a cataclycephaline worms are kind of piling around the amphopods and in those lakes, the microbe is using those rodents as vehicles to get into cats. So if they're getting into cats, they're coming out in cat poop. And this is why pregnant women should in no way be anywhere near cat poop,

because this has the toxoplasma. And from that, you can get toxoplasma, which is actually a very dangerous for the developing child. All right, the CDC echoes this, and pregnant people, if you must change cat litter, do so with gloves and PPE and wash your hands and also make someone else do it

because you are growing a child. And that child could develop vision loss, seizures, or cognitive difficulties if infected in utero. And yeah, millions of people have toxo, actually billions, vision loss, seizures, or cognitive difficulties if infected in utero. Yeah, millions of people have toxo, actually billions, about 10% of the American population, but yeah, they think 50% worldwide. And outdoor cats and stray kitties are more likely to have it from hunting infected animals. So this is another vote for keeping your cats inside.

You can see the philinology episode for more on that. And yes, Toxo is not just for litter boxes, according to the CDC, it can live in the environment for many months and can contaminate soil and water, fruits and veggies, sand boxes, grass, where animals graze, or any place where an infected cat may have left you a turd. Gardening, wash your mitts, wash your veggies. So mind controlling parasites, they're scarier,

then ghosts who are just sticking around in the attic with some chains. But there's a growing body of research showing some behavioral issues around people who are, in fact, with toxoplasmosis. This is, I think about a third of the population. And it's been linked to aggression. There was a study that found that people

tend to be more car crashes, talk supply services, which also might be a link to aggression. It really comes down to this, I think really this fallacy that we as humans are fully in control of what we are doing, where there is all sorts of things happening in our brain that we have no control over. I'm not a specific believer in free will if you can believe it, but there's also these outside influences. So it's like you can get toxoplasma in your brain and it's not like it intentionally doing it, but because where mammals were related to mice and rats in the way past, but still related, it's just kind

of a byproduct. It does some strange things to our brain as well. And then it makes you think, well, what are the kinds of microbes I've got in our brain and are suddenly affecting our behavior? It's a good question. And maybe one that, not many people want to think about. Early Grammican and Kristen Rosenblum want to know about rabies. Kristen asks, what are different methods used to take over the nervous system? I'm thinking about rabies.

When you think about what rabies does to people, which is truly terrible, and the myth of the zombie, they align very well. So rabies is not meant to be in humans. You get it in raccoons, coyis, these sorts of things that undergo these really diabolical manipulations. So the virus makes the animal hyper-aggressive. It proliferates in the saliva. So when it orders basically that creature to bite onto another animal, that's the way that it transmits itself between different hosts. And of course, we are not meant as humans to be part of that life cycle for the rabies virus, but we just happen

to be also manipulated by it's, again, it's truly diabolical stuff. So people with rabies, it's essentially a death sentence, almost nobody who has contracted rabies has survived it unless you get the vaccine I want to say this and I truly mean that you and this is not like oh I said I should go watch this or think there are videos of this I would not if you come across one don't ever watch it It's it's really really difficult stuff to watch because you you can see the person struggling They can be hyper aggressive like a raccoon or a coyote, good, but they're also afraid of water.

So this is a manipulation on the part of the parasite for its other host to keep those animals from drinking and washing the virus out of its mouth. So there's more that virus for when it bites on, it's better able to transmit. It's a truly horrific thing to happen to humans, and it's probably the basis of the zombie myth, which is this person that is locked up,

kind of mumbling and really struggling. I know he said not to, and of course I did. And yeah, grainy footage of blurred children's faces when agitated in a hospital bed, recoiling at water offered by his really despondent mom. It was really gutting and to know how grim the prognosis is, it's just awful. And while most infections happen with a bite, you can contract rabies from saliva on an open wound. And once it's contracted, rabies is so deadly that even if you wake up with a bat in your room,

the medical protocol is post-exposure prophylactics, which is a series of shots just in case you were scratched or bitten in your sleep. Obviously, with larger infected animals, it's easier to discern if you've had a bite. So while rabies' deaths are rare in the US, be careful. Make sure your pets have their shots. rabies' is a real zero out of 10. Would not recommend no stars on Yelp, double thumbs down.

A couple of people wanted to know. Auto-K-Hose, aka Chris P. Wanted to know, according to the World Wide Web, there's a powder that can be inhaled, generally unwillingly, which makes the inhaler easily manipulated. How about the veracity of Haitian zombies with textro-dot do toxins from pufferfish, anything else in human beings that would count a zombification or does one have to be alive

to do behavioral manipulation, or can a plant do behavioral manipulation? Yeah, you got to be alive. So like the proper zombie in public culture comes back from the dead, right? As far as we know, that's not possible for people. Luckily, that would be very problematic if people started popping up from the dead. Really would. Legally having to go to the courthouse and reverse record, that would be such a nightmare.

A lot of paperwork. So much paperwork. We don't need that. We don't need that. Petrodoxin, PS is the magic pixie dust derived from pufferfish or nuts, and it can cause very unfun reactions like numbness and barfing and motor paralysis, respiratory arrest, and the big D that sends you up to heaven.

Cooking doesn't even neutralize it, and it can get you via ingestion, injection, inhalation, or breaking your skin. It's an opportunist, and it apparently blocks fast, voltage-gated sodium channels in the nervous system. But more importantly, there's no antidote. So if you're a vacation and you're drunk, brother-in-law challenges you to try the puffer fish, just say no, man, or say, I hate you, Derek. Everybody hates you.

Do you think that human beings can be zombies to other human beings by engaging in behavioral manipulation? human beings can be zombies to other human beings by engaging in behavioral manipulation. Oh my God. I think that's the main route of our behavioral manipulation. I'd almost rather be taken over by a fungus and being manipulated by people for the rest of my life. But yeah, it's like, it gets at these really sticky questions about free will, right? Like if we are able to fully parts the way that consciousness works, that wouldn't realize that, oh man, we're just kind of chemicals in electricity and gobs of fat in our brains, right?

If parasites are so just proficient at hijacking these systems, reaching across the tree of life, like a fungus is an entirely different animal, not even an entirely different organism that an ant, right? There's fully assuming the body of another organism. It's kind of a profound question. It's not my profound question, I didn't think this up.

But when does an ant that's infected by aphiocorecepts stop being an ant and start being something new, something like a zombie. Like what is the dividing line there? It's weird to think about, but it's again, not just having an ants, having all across the animal kingdom. Yeah.

So we've done quantum ontology about the universe and if it's real, but if anyone's up for a metaphysical ontology episode on the philosophical study of being, that one might be the scariest of all, because it's much easier to just play video games or scroll on TikTok instead of feeling our feelings and confronting our own existence.

Anyway, a bunch of people had good questions about applications and humans, Emily Struffer, Dave Cannon, Isabelle Lecklerk, Mark Phillips, Ann Marie, Vertz, Bikki, wanted to know, well, in Ann Marie's words, what are neurologists saying about parasitic mind control? And Emily asked, is it possible to target only certain parts of our brain for mind control?

I could be used something like this to treat depression or other mental illness. Yeah, great questions. So in the book, I visit a scientist at NYU who is working with Broents with this fascinating system, actually injecting materials that kind of break into individual cells in the brain and respond then to light. So she's able to shine light into the brain and activate parts of that brain, one of which being for aggression, it can actually make these rodents much more aggressive.

So it's like learning more about how the brain operates in these ways. And I don't think she's looking to do the same thing to humans, like this some sort of diabolical lab where she's shining light in people's brains and making them angry. So pissed. But I think of this really fascinating notion

that as we learn more about the human brain, what makes it tick, hopefully that does not go in the direction of somebody saying, well, if we know what makes it tick, these are the ways I can behaviorally manipulate those brains like coffee, accordice epsimite, and a South American jungle. So in Plight and Living Dead, you can see the chapter titled The Brain Hacked Rat, the War of Funny Hat, and destroyed the notion of free will, which details a work of neuroscientist Dr. Anagrit Faulkner. Now at Princeton, who uses optogenetics to stimulate rodent aggression

through fiber optic cables in the hypothalamus, a very specifically infected subject, involves metanurus surgery, virology, technology to accomplish this mind control. And very complicated. It seems a lot easier just to give the mice tiny little phones and show them pictures of richer, prettier mice with better lives. That's probably a faster process, too. On that note, buddy freaking gyerson and Andromic Adams, both head questions, buddies words,

what are your thoughts on fast versus slow zombies? And you're asked when humans become zombies. Do you think they're going to be slow moving? Like dawn of the dead? Or will they have dramatically increased physical abilities? Love the question. I think that this looking at these parasites and then natural world gives us some actually very fascinating windows into this. So if you are off your court of steps infecting an ant, you don't really necessarily need to worry about the speed with which you're controlling that ant, right? You just don't want it to look weird enough that it gets discovered by its sisters and dumped in the graveyard. But there are other parasites out there, so like the

Camp The Seffelins that I was talking about that in fact the little crustaceans and the lakes, they need to make sure that their hosts are in full not only full control of their bodies but able to get to those specific parts of the lake either to the surface to be eaten by a bird or farther down the water column to be eaten by a fish. So when we're thinking about parasites turning their hosts into vehicles into these sorts of zombies, do you want a fast zombie sometimes? Yeah, for sure. If you need it to complete your life cycle,

does the horsehair worm in the cricket need it to be well enough to get into that body of water? Absolutely. But there are others like the jewel wasp and the cockroach. There's no speed considerations here. It just stupifies the host. So what would be the case in humans? I would argue that it would be a speed thing.

Like if it's about the virus ordering around the human host to bite more humans, you don't want to slow bumbling zombie host. You want like a 28 days later, super speedy zombie that can bite more and more people because it's like from an evolutionary sense, if the virus can pass itself on to more and more host, it's able to further more generations of speedy zombies, that sort of thing. So yeah, looking to the natural world,

I would vote on us becoming fast ones. I feel like that's a controversial topic, and I'm probably gonna get dragged for it on the internet though. What a drag. Sarah, RL wants to know, have you ever dressed as a ZOMB for Halloween, such as the insect or a Pofficephalus Borealis. I don't know what that is, but maybe you do. Oh yes, the decapitating flies. I have not dressed up as any of these animals. Unfortunately,

I feel like at a Halloween party, it would take a very long time for me to describe what it is I'm doing here. And then people would just go, but I'd go glaze over and they would walk away. Which is fun. I don't like talking to people with parties anyway, so forget about it. All right, his wooden glaze over because ant decapitating flies are frilling. But the short version, according to math writing,

is that a forward fly pierces a host ant between the legs, launches an egg torpedo into its body and then it gets out of dodge. It's like, thanks man, it lets the end do the whole pregnancy part and the larva migrates to the ants head living off of its sweet sweet juices before mind controlling it to leave the colony to more humid leaf litter and then put off pops its head and like Maryland out of birthday cake now you have another homicidal fly. Oh the circle of life is so beautiful

and brutal and disgusting. Mikael Max-Jorne wants to know, Massopora and cicadas going bananas, what's up with that? Flange salt shakers of death, I think is what, I'm not sure what they're referring to. cicadas get infected with this fungus. So what this fungus does, it's not an intricate manipulator

like off your cordycepses, but it just rots away the abdomen of the cicada. To the point where you can have, you can find cicadas kind of dragging themselves around, missing basically the entirety of their abdomen that it's just been eaten away. So this one's fascinating because this was not me who thought the name, find saltshaker of death,

but when it's flying through the air, it's actually shedding those scores, which then fall on to more cicadas, not unlike the way that obvious course steps is operating. It's just not manipulating the behavior of the cicada as much. Yes, we have a whole episode on cicadas. It's linked in the show notes. And a highlight of my life was catching the emergence of Bruton in the Midwest of years back. And cicadas, you can say in my ear, it's loud as you want, even though I'm never going to mate with you. Potato Puffer wants to know what about the caterpillar that gets ants to be at zombie bodyguards by having them consume its secretions of dopamine that make them less likely to

move away from the caterpillar and more likely to be aggressive. Yeah, it's a super cool one. There's a wasp that injects its eggs into caterpillars as well, and they grow throughout its body, and then erupt through the caterpillar's skin and the caterpillar doesn't die because as they're erupting, they're shedding parts of their skin that plug up the wounds, and it keeps the caterpillar alive to act as a bodyguard as

Those little babies are developing. So that's fun. But yeah, so caterpillars actually have all these really cool interactions with ants and kind of terrifying ways. Do I have time for like a yeah, bring it on a really interesting one? Okay, so yeah, there's this really lazily named species called the large blue butterfly Is what it says on the tin. It's caterpillar does something even crazier. It lets itself get captured by ants that take it back into the colony, which would presumably turn into food. But no, it also releases pheromones that trick those worker ants into thinking that it is not only part of the colony,

but actually the queen. So they do it on it. They take care of it. They feed the colony's actual larvae to this caterpillar that just goes to town on these things, tricking the ants into thinking that it is one of their own, gets even crazier because there's a hyperparasite toyed wasp that comes in to all of this, releases its own pheromones as it's entering the colony, and this freaks out the workers, they run around going absolutely bonkers. In the confusion, the wasp comes up to that caterpillar, which had itself zombified the ants and jacks it with its eggs and leaves the nest. Like it's, it's zombies all the way down, right? It went after the other, but caterpillars, I love that question because they're so cute and cuddly and lovely, but I can be a little bit diabolical. Rough. Yeah, it's about grasping opportunities, right?

You got to get your bag, you know? Yeah. Last listener question, let's end on a bummer. Robert G. Audit and Caitlin Kalinowski wanted to know about global warming. Robert's words, with the global temperature increase, there are signs fungi might be adapting to live at our slowly dropping body temperatures. Now at 97.5, down from 98.6. I didn't know that. Are we at risk for pathogenic brain killing fungi like cordiceps as time goes on? Sheesh, they say.

Yeah, a great question. And the heavy field within climate science, which is determining which pathogens we have to worry about more on a warming planet. So where, for instance, will the conditions warmer, perhaps wetter conditions become better for fungi? Where are we going to get the expansion of malaria because mosquitoes are moving into new areas? It's a great question and not a bright topic,

but it's going to be super important for public health going forward as much worrying about, like like behaviorally manipulating parasites, like these fungi that we've been talking about, but certainly all manner of others that are going to expand their ranges due to climate change. That's a, I'm sorry, that's a bummer. I don't know how to phrase that in a... Listen, there's no good way to phrase that large of bad news. And if that doesn't get you, might be the microplastics. Again, his latest book about microplastics is called A Poison Like No Other.

And it's linked in the show notes, just in case you'd like more info and terror in your life. I'm just asking two bummer questions in a row. But last question is over here. I always ask. Usually I say what's the worst thing about your job. But I want to know what the suckiest zombie movie or something that bums you out

about zombies or something that sucks about zombies or the worst artistic interpretation you've seen. I think what bothers me most is just how they keep coming. Not unlike zombies. It's run its course. Let's move on from zombies. Let's maybe think of something. And this is coming from person wrote a book about them.

I'm sick of hearing about them, because I also, I ruined it for myself, because I feel like what has happened in nature, what has evolved many, many, many times, independently across the tree of life is so much more interesting than what some hacky screenwriter cobbled together in a Coke-fueled afternoon. But that should be being grumpy. Favorite thing about writing the book? Favorite story or favorite experience traveling. I think the walking through New Mexico looking for the horsehair worms, there was the guy at the side just walking me around, there was a sign that said like beware of bears and mountain lines or something along those lines, he was like, don't worry about it, I've never seen a bear or a mountain line

out here. He's like, well, they put the sign up for some sort of reason. He was like, I got, I loved him. I got you about him in the book, but I don't, I'm not a hiker. I actually despise hiking. I'm sorry, what? But that was the best hike that I've ever been on. Because I got to hold a handful of horsehair worms. And it's just like, I feel this is stupid work. I don't use a word blessed ever, but it's the best way I can think of. I'm blessed to have a job that allows me to not only good do things like that, but to go to work every day and learn from very smart people. As you do, people that are maybe two or three times smarter than me.

It's a humbling experience, but it's also, I get to learn every day and it's, I love it every minute of it. Is there a reason you're hate hiking? Just curious. I don't hear so much. I understand it's stupid and I'm going to get dried for this as well. But I just don't like that there's nothing at the end, right? Like, I am okay. I could walk 50 miles through a city if there's some cool destination, like a bookstore, and then I'm totally fine walking all the way back.

I don't understand walking up a mountain to see like a rock or a tree. How do you? Like, if you've seen one tree, you've seen all of them. I'm not saying the outdoors are bad. I'm just saying that the method of experiencing the outdoors by way of a hike is my less than favorite thing to do.

In addition to the predators out there, don't forget about the bears and mountain lions. What if they eat you? I'm fueled by snacks and knowing that when you get to where you're going, you stop and you have a snack and then you go back. So a lot of the time I'm thinking about whatever kind of trail mix with M&M's and stuff we got. I've never thought about it in a snack perspective. But that makes sense.

Maybe I should just let up a backpack with good snacks. Well, I wish you many years of indoor activities. Thank you. Please keep writing books because they're some of my favorite. You and Mary Roach are just killing the game out there. Thank you. Just writing such good stuff. So I hope people pick up this one

and then if they're too happy about it, get your microplastics book. Yeah, wanna sweet dose of reality? Ha ha ha ha. Fuck a lot. This has been a joy. Thank you so much. Likewise, I really appreciate it.

Good talking as well. So ask smart authors, unsmart questions, and you're bound to stagger away with just a brain load of goodies. Thank you so much to my pal Matt Simon for obliging and telling me all about these critters. His book, Plite of the Living Dead, details even more, and it's just such a fun read.

And his new book, A Poison Like No Other, is linked in the show notes for you. There's also a link to the World Wildlife Fund. We are at Oligies on Instagram and Twitter. I'm at Allie Ward with one L on both Smalleges or Kid Friendly versions of classic episodes and their linked in the show notes, or up at allieward.com slash Smalleges. Thank you Zee Grandriggas Thomas and Gerrit Sleeper of Mindja Media for editing those as well as Mercedes-Mateland. Thanks to Aaron Talbert for admitting the Oligis podcast Facebook group. Emily White of the Wordery makes our professional transcripts Susan Hale is our Lord and

managing director Noel DeWorthy scheduling producer Kelly R. Dwyer makes the website and the puppeteer of our editing processes Mercedes-Metland of Maitland Audio Nick Thorburn made the theme music and if you stick around to the end of the episode I tell you a secret and last week okay okay buckle up I was coming back from the East Coast on the plane with Jarrett, and it had been like a weirdly hellish, travel day with its layover and a storm, the worst turbulence I've ever been in,

and we were sitting in the back row of the plane right next to the toilet, and we had our 10 year old daughter, Grammy, who is a delight and also a dog. And we were landing after this really long, 12 hour airport day, and I went to wake Grammy up under the seat and her ear felt cold so I shook her and she didn't didn't move or wake up and she hates

her pause being touched so I was hunched over kind of touching her pause nothing and I told Jared kind of in a panic and her paws, nothing. And I told Jeric kind of in a panic and he tried to wake her, and nothing. And he pulled her travel carrier out of the seat. And we were both on this plane screaming, Grammy, Grammy. And my whole life just changed because Grammy had died on a plane while we were sitting two feet away, totally unaware that she passed under our feet. And I almost threw up, Jarrett was about to start crying. And then her head popped up. She's like, hey guys, you got any cheese? I don't know how she was sleeping so soundly. We thought, for a good minute, she was dead. So hug your loved ones because

it's not often that they spontaneously resurrect from the seeming dead a week before Halloween. Anyway, whoo, very lucky, bye bye. You are going to feel like a zombie after this.