An ant and fly from the Cretaceous period offer insights into the history of Ophiocordyceps, the fungal parasite made popular ...

Cretaceous amber has pushed back the evolutionary timeline of one of nature’s most bizarre parasitic relationships: the infamous “zombie-ant” fungi. Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences ...

A parasitic fungus transforms ants into “zombies.” Scientists say that the ant-attacking fungus is infected with fungal parasites of its own, which could be helping to keep ant zombification ...

Long before humans walked the Earth, while dinosaurs were still roaming the land, a parasitic fungus hijacked the mind of a ...

This week, see zombie fungi trapped in an amber fossil, explore the sun’s hidden south pole, meet tool-using whales that ...

Step 1: The Zombie Ant. The parasite hijacks an ant’s brain after an ant eats a ball of snail mucus infested with fluke larvae. The larvae then mature inside the brain, ...

Then, like flicking a switch, the parasite can let go of the puppet strings and the ant will be roused, dazed, and left to go about its business until the next takeover when conditions cool once more.

Paleontologists studying insects trapped in amber from 99 million years ago have made a remarkable discovery: an ant and a ...

Parasite Controls Ants' Minds to Turn Them into 'Zombies' Published Sep 18, 2023 at 10:16 AM EDT Updated Sep 18, 2023 at 11:46 AM EDT. By .

Brain-altering parasite turns ants into zombies at dawn and dusk. ScienceDaily. Retrieved June 2, 2025 from www.sciencedaily.com / releases / 2023 / 09 / 230917181545.htm.

The resulting mutant ant with two copies of the “parasitic” version of the supergene could have suddenly developed into a miniature queen that looked a lot like an inquiline. The work showed that a ...

Zombie ant parasite is ‘even more cunning’ than previously thought, scientists say ‘We joked about having found the ants’ zombie switch’ ...