Sci-fi monster seems to have entered the real world, as a mind-controlling strain of fungus has infected spiders in Northern Ireland.
You might be familiar with the TV show The Last of Us, where people turn into vicious zombies after being infected by a fungus. These sci-fi monster seems to have now entered the real world, as spiders infected with a new strain of fungus were recently found in Northern Ireland.
THE LAST OF US , directed by Liza Johnson, Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann. Credit: PlayStation Productions / Sony Pictures Television / AlbumMoncrieff“So usually those fungi will actually control the organism and bring it somewhere high up - on a ceiling, on a roof, on the top of a tree,” he said.“So, it forces the jaws to lock into the rock, the tree, the leaf or whatever the substrate is. “Then it kills the host and it blooms, feeds on the organism, released the spores and that gives it a better chance of reproducing and finding new bugs to infect.”European Cave Spider in limestone cave. Plitvice Lakes National Park, Croatia. Image: Nature Picture Library / Alamy. 19 January 2015 The phenomenon was spotted during the filming of a BBC documentary in County Cavan, when cave spiders seen behaving in an unusual manner. “So, what’s very interesting is that the spider we’re speaking about is the cave spider, and that spider has one particularity – it hates daylight,” said Dr Dugon.“What was noticed is that there were corpses of those spiders hanging from the ceiling of a cave, and that those corpses were covered with fungi, and they were all at the entrance of the cave, towards the light. “This would have been extremely unlikely coming from the spider itself, so that triggered the study and then scientists found out that in fact, it is one of those zombie-making fungi that can control the movement and the behaviour of spiders.”However, he said that spiders' brains are a lot simpler than human ones and so it is easier for the fungus to penetrate their nervous systems. Main image: Daddy longlegs spider infected with a fungal pathogen in a cave near Podere Montecucco, Orvieot, Umbria, Italy. Image: Nature Picture Library / Alamy. 16 January 2011
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