Zombies?

We all know someone who thinks zombies are real and will eventually kill us all in a zombie apocalypse (if not keep reading anyways It’s not that important that you do). So, being the nerd I am, I wanted to see whether or not I should start putting together a survival kit in my basement. During my research I found two possibilities, a brain-eating fungus recently found in several insects in Brazil, or poison from a fish. Not exactly promising…

A few years ago, a man in Chicago was arrested for purchasing tetrodotoxin or TTX. This is 1,000 times more toxic than cyanide. The man supposedly had intentions of assassination by TTX. What is this toxin you ask? Well, tetrodotoxin is an incredibly potent neurotoxin, and has no antidote. It blocks action potential innerves by binding the “fast” sodium channels in nerve cell membranes. To put it in simple terms, it acts on the central and the peripheral nervous systems so, that means it messes up your autonomic motor and sensory nerves, basicly making you behave in “zombie-like” fashion. Other symptoms may include numbness of the lips and tongue, sweating, headache, weakness, incoordination, tremor, paralysis, seizures, coma, hypotension, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal pain.

An intentional application of TTX could be the cause of the zombies sighted in Haiti. People in Haiti reported that a few years after someone’s death they could be seen walking around the village (pretty cool huh?). In the 1970’s a Harvard ethnobotanist named Wade Davis reported that he had obtained samples of “zombie-powder” from voodoo sorcerers in Haiti. The things found in these samples were ground human bones and contained, you guessed it, TTX from powdered puffer fish. Davis also reported that people who had committed acts against fellow villagers were sold to the sorcerer as slaves. The sorcerer would administer the “zombie-powder” on the skin so it can be absorbed and that would induce a near-death coma. After, the sorcerer would retrieve the person, and administer some powerful drugs and enslave the zombie. Several cases of these occurrences have been reported, but were all inconclusive. Davis concluded that zombification is an imprecise process. Some people were only sick, while others were killed in this process, the belief in this process make it a phenomenon. (click here for more)

This May there was a press release at Penn State about the zombification of carpenter ants. This was caused by a parasitic fungus, n that makes the act zombie-like and eventually dies in a place that has good conditions for the fungi to reproduce. A paper describing the research was published in the BioMed Central open-access journal BMC Ecology on 9 May 2011.

"The behavior of these infected zombie ants essentially causes their bodies to become an extension of the fungus's own phenotype, as non-infected ants never behave in this way," said David P. Hughes, the first author of the research paper and an assistant professor ofentomology and biology at Penn State University.

A research team in Thailand discovered these fungi on some tropical carpenter ants. They used light microscopes to see the effect the fungus had on the ants. They saw that the fungi had spread, filling the ant’s head and body, making muscle fibers spread apart. Also, it affect the ant’s central nervous system. Researchers noticed that the infected ant walk in a random pattern, while normal ants walk in a straight line. The ants with fungi also had convulsions, causing them to fall to the ground, instead of climbing on trees. These caused the ants to not be able to find their way up to the canopy and were forced to remain at a lower leafy level about ten inches above the soil. This spot is ideal for the fungus to reproduce because it was cool and moist. The ant would then bite the underside of a leaf, the fungus caused a “lock-jaw”, not allowing the ant to let go, even after death. The fungus would then grow through the ant’s head, creating a stroma( it’s a thing that uses asexual reproduction to create more of the fungus to spread), then spreading the fungus to other ants. (click here for more)

The main researcher said they would look into making this fungus into a pest control for homes and farms. Not exactly human zombification, but pretty close to it.

So, what are your thoughts on this? Do you think either of these things could happen? Or maybe something else? Comment and tell me!