The content of horror films such as "Living Dead" reached its peak a long time ago, and their plots have been frankly repeated over the past 20 years. Judge for yourself: from one decade to the next, dull zombies, stripped to the bone in secondhand rags, roam the streets of typical American towns with their all long-boring dreary cry: "Brains-and-and!"
But there is a good way to fix this. All Hollywood filmmakers need to do is move closer to nature and learn the skill of creating zombies … from insects! And the most real zombies.
Ants are the first victim
As sunset approaches, the ants rush to their home. The "doors" to the anthill are closed, no one else is allowed - all of them are already inside … But is that all? But what about that lonely ant, which, instead of going to bed, climbed onto a high blade of grass and looked thoughtfully into the distance? What does he see in this distance? He doesn't see anything! And at all this is not the plot of the fairy tale "How the ant was in a hurry home", as you might think, but the harsh, cruel truth of life.
The "romantic" ant actually now does not belong either to itself or to its fellows, but it is in the complete power of the lanceolate fluke, a special type of parasitic worm. The ant subordinate to the fluke is a real zombie.
During the day, he pretends to be law-abiding, fusses about his ant affairs, gets food, observes hygiene and so on. And in the late afternoon, when everyone goes to bed, a zombie ant, at the request of its mistress, climbs the highest blade of grass and waits there - no, not a romantic date, but until it is licked by a beast accidentally passing by.
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The fact is that for the fluke ants are just "cannon fodder". The main goal of the parasite is to get inside a more serious animal: a fox, a wolf, and best of all, a cow. In the feces of these animals, the larvae of the worm develop best, after which, at the exit, let's say, they attract snails with their special smell - also an intermediate variant of the development of the parasite. From the snails, the worms fall into the ants, and the whole story repeats itself. This is the life cycle of a fluke …
Cordyceps, a type of parasitic fungus, is even more cruel. For their gloomy deeds, Cordyceps also chooses unrequited ants as a sacrifice. When the spores of the fungus hit the insect, they quickly penetrate inside, reach the brain … and the ant is no longer an ant, but a machine for the reproduction of the parasite and the destruction of its own kind.
Cordyceps, having reached the ant's brain, like the fluke, drives its slave onto a high blade of grass or a branch, preferably hanging over the anthill, but not at all so that the victim waits there for no one knows what. As soon as the slave reaches the desired height, the cordyceps orders him to firmly grab all the mandibles into the support and die in an instant.
And the ant obeys unquestioningly. And the vile parasite begins to develop in his body and, having reached the stage of spores, "blows up" the ant, after which the spores, descending down to the anthill, find themselves more and more slaves.
Not only ants, but also flies, caterpillars and butterflies can become victims of the parasitic fungus.
Ladybugs are a biological weapon
Not so long ago, scientists have discovered even more cruel and unscrupulous parasites that use their victims both as a source of reproduction and as a weapon of defense and attack. This time the role of a slave (or a zombie, as you like best) is the well-known ladybug, and the parasitic green-eyed wasp becomes the "gray cardinal".
Having chosen a suitable victim among the ladybugs carelessly frolicking in the meadow, the wasp temporarily paralyzes it, after which it lays its eggs inside and simultaneously introduces a virus similar to the polio virus into the ladybug's body.
After 20 days, the wasp larva emerges from the ladybug and begins to weave a cocoon under its abdomen. All this time the cow remains alive, but does not move. At the time of making the cocoon, the virus "turns on" in the work of the cow's brain, and under its influence, she begins to actively protect the wasp larva, which is in the cocoon, from enemies.
All this "idyll" continues until the moment when the larva in the cocoon reaches the penultimate stage, that is, it is about to turn into a wasp, and she will no longer need the protection of some kind of cow. It is then that the larva begins to eat its bodyguard from the inside, clearly demonstrating all the meanness of character.
It is interesting that about a third of the ladybirds, having gone through almost all of the "circles of hell" we have listed, by some miracle remain alive. Either they have developed immunity to the mysterious virus, or they have learned to free themselves from the already ripe wasp larva before it causes irreparable harm to the cow's body. And most likely, both.
Horsehair
Surely those who spent their childhood in the village were frightened by the adults with the so-called horsehair. And the children, of course, imagined this horror in the form of a horse's hair - from a mane or tail. And most likely those who were especially intimidated were afraid to even stroke the collective farm horse. So, in fact, such a parasite - horsehair - exists, but it does not live in the mane or tail of a horse, it can rarely be found except in hooves.
How he gets there is still unknown, although there are assumptions. The fact is that for its starting, if I may say so, development, horsehair prefers crickets and grasshoppers. No, crickets themselves do not climb into horse hooves, but when the parasite reaches a certain stage, it drives its cricket slave into a river or lake. There, the parasite crawls out, throwing a half-dead slave to be torn apart by fish, and he swims away to look for a mate.
Horsehair reproduces very actively in water (each female lays up to 10 million eggs at a time), and poor horses have nothing to do with it. Another thing is that every parasite needs a cricket or a grasshopper to reproduce. But the chance to get to land is to get stuck in the hoof of a horse that has come to drink. On the other hand, let us agree that this chance is negligible - how many horses are now being taken to the river? So either horsehair urgently needs to be rebuilt, or it has other ways besides horse hooves.
Well, and, of course, horsehair (by the way, it was named so because it really looks like horse hair), all bathers, starting from the Middle Ages, were afraid to tremble in their knees. It was believed that this parasite easily and painlessly penetrates through the skin of the swimmer, reaches the heart (eating away everything that suits his taste along the way), and then the person dies in terrible agony.
So, we do not know what grasshoppers and crickets feel there, but horse hair cannot live in a human body, we are not interesting to him, and therefore, even if horse hair is found in a pond, you can safely swim.
Sakkulina
Sacculina carcini shells begin life as tiny free-swimming larvae, but once they find a host crab, they grow much larger. The first crustacean host is colonized by the female: she clings to the bottom of the crab, forming a bulge in its shell. It then spreads root-like tendrils along the host's body, which are used to absorb nutrients.
When the parasite grows, the bump in the crab's shell turns into a bump. After that, the male Sacculina carcini is moved there, is introduced into its partner and produces sperm. After this, the couple copulates continuously.
As for the unfortunate crab, during this time it becomes, in fact, a slave. He stops growing on his own and begins to care for the eggs of the parasite as if they were his own. Note that the parasites stick only to male crab.
During the reign of Sacculina carcini, something extraordinary happens to the male host. Parasites sterilize him, and then reshape his body so that it becomes similar to that of a female - expanding and flattening the belly.
Then the body of the crab begins to produce certain hormones, and the male crab begins to behave exactly like the female of his species, even to perform ritual mating dances of the female in front of other males. And, like a female, she takes care of the eggs of “her” parasites.
Konstantin FEDOROV