Zombie Creating Fungi

Should we make little ant size shotguns ?

How ant-agonistic! They'll never be able to turn over a new leaf.

But seriously, isn't implied in this activity some sort of intelligence or intelligent design?Hardly can I imagine anything there as a random behavior. Can a virus have some sort of big picture? OPK then if it's notr the virus, then what/whom? Is there a location for the intelligence or master planner?

Plants have something akin to intelligence. Take the fig tree and the yupons that sprouted around it, when I neglected my back yard for an extended period. Those weed-like yupon trees showed a plan to kill the fig tree. Their leaves grew into mats that covered all the fig leaves totally, depriving it of any sun. The fig tree is twisted and stunted, now. I cleaned out the yupons, but it will take that tree a long time to recover, if it ever does.

Perhaps it's only just a figment of your imagination?

I had to lookup yupon:
Yupon \Yu"pon\, n. (Bot.)
Same as Yaupon.
Yaupon \Yau"pon\, n. (Bot.)
A shrub (Ilex Cassine) of the Holly family, native from
Virginia to Florida. The smooth elliptical leaves are used as
a substitute for tea, and were formerly used in preparing the
black drink of the Indians of North Carolina. Called also
South-Sea tea. [Written also yapon, youpon, and
yupon.]

But how do/does the sprouts 'know' to cover up the competitive plant life in that certain way will starve the tree off and kill it? Why doesn't it just grow in some random way ... like on the trunk and branches ONLY?

I can't think like a plant. I just know there is a sentience that acts on a given situation. The fig was an intruder, since yupons grew there first. Their leaves did not simply grow above the fig leaves, they bore down on them.

Put that in the category of 'things that make you say hmmmmmmmmm'.

I'm a die-hard agnostic, but that dynamic stumps me cold - mainly because in order to discuss this we start talking about a plant and thinking in the same breath or talking about behavior? I used to think that plants JUST grow/ grow towards the light, respond to water and food and try to grow and often do well in groups. This sort of behavior is stumper for me.

I am no scientist. I don't know who has made a study of such things and if so what has been determined.

Well, for me, (unlike some older, overdone threads which have been become boring), this thread has given me food for thought. Hopefully others feel the same way, too.

It can be explained by describing life as a push into this universe from another dimension . This means the theory of evolution is at best in its infancy as we clearly do not have a grasp on most things . Religious people make a leap of faith that dimension is God . Atheists make a bigger leap of faith that such a dimension does not exist . They are happy with thinking they know everything whereas agnostics can clearly see the problems with both sides . Understanding life and in particular the theory of evolution has a long way to go ......

Both atheists and theists are taking short cuts .

I have been hoping for a well educated in science reader to happen along with their own take on it.

Wow, I looked up a Wiki about cordyceps and found out that
1The tomato horn worm fungus that attacks these garden pests is a cordyceps species . Ive had many of these things and then when we would dust the tmater with a supposed Bt dust, the "fruiting body antnennae" would show up in a few days and the worms would croak in spasms of nerve racking shivers. (MY wife would pick em off the bush and kill em so they wouldn "Suffer".

2Chinese use the cordyseps (sinensis) as medicine. Apparently it has a hypoglycemic property for insulin od

3Its in the fossil record .(I checked my "Treatise of Paleo..." and the indicators of cordyceps is at least as far back as the Eocene. SInce communal insects go back into the Jurassic, maybe this fungus has a longer history on the planet.

With the exception of the tomato hornworm fungus, everything else was a look-up so, any arguments about those and I can refer you to the sources.

Well, I am no science expert, but I've been following the discovery.

This may be superfluous to your info, but I'll just repeat it, if you don't mind.

Zombie ants: How a fungus takes control of carpenter ants

Zombie ants: Identified from samples collected at two sites in Brazil's tropical rain forest, each of the four fungus species specializes in controlling a different species of carpenter ant, creating Zombie ants.

Once it infects an ant, the so-called zombie ant fungus uses as-yet-unidentified chemicals to control the ant's behavior, making them do some very un-ant-like things.

Cordyceps militaris

by Michael Kuo

Cordyceps militaris is pretty much the coolest mushroom ever, and I will detail its features in a moment--but first I am obliged to discuss CMS, a common problem among mushroom hunters and mycologists. The acronym stands for Cordyceps Moron Syndrome, and symptoms present in two ways. The CMS sufferer 1) plucks any club fungus instantly from its substrate, regardless of what treasures might be found beneath the mushroom, and 2) cannot manage to take a decent photo of a Cordyceps even when the first symptom is bypassed.

The genus Cordyceps consists of clublike parasites that attack underground puffballs or insects. The puffball-parasitizing species are cool enough (see Cordyceps ophioglossoides for an example, and see the Key to Mycotrophs for a key to 5 North American species), but the bug parasites are astounding. They erupt from insects, bringing to mind the infamous scene in Alien in which John Hurt has a very bad meal.

Cordyceps militaris is the best-known and most frequently collected bug-killing Cordyceps, but there are dozens of "entomogenous" species in North America. The victim for Cordyceps militaris is a pupa or larva (usually of a butterfly or moth). Its mycelium colonizes the living insect and mummifies it, keeping it alive just long enough to generate the biomass it needs to produce the mushroom--a "spore factory" that allows the Cordyceps to reproduce.

With Cordyceps militaris the bug is buried in the ground or in well decayed wood, which means the mushroom collector usually sees only a little orange club with a finely pimply surface. Since I suffer from CMS, the one time I found Cordyceps militaris I assumed I was looking at Clavulinopsis laeticolor, took some half-hearted pictures and plucked the thing promptly, without digging up the bug. Fortunately, Andy Methven and George Barron do not suffer from CMS, and their wonderful photos to the right depict Cordyceps militaris in all its murderous glory.

Get this: Cordyceps lloydii (you really need to click the link and see the photos) attacks living ants and secretes a chemical that compels them to climb to the top of the Costa Rican canopy and attach themselves to leaves; then the mushroom erupts from the ant's head or body to disperse spores into wind currents.

Or this: Imagine that Sigourney Weaver and the others, in Alien, could have sensed that John Hurt was infected by an alien parasite, and killed him and quarantined his body rather than sitting down to lunch with him and a secret new shipmate. This is more or less what happens among some ants and termites that have evolved the ability to detect Cordyceps-infected compadres; sentry soldiers guarding the Queen kill the infected insects and take their bodies far from the nest before they can threaten the colony.

THIS JUST IN!
Zombie ant fungus, meet the anti-zombie-ant fungus
A new study has found that a zombifying ant fungus can be kept at bay by another pathogen.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0503/Zombie-ant-fungus-meet-the-anti-zombie-ant-fungus