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- 9 min
- 20.7M
- Tyler Oliveira
- Overview
- 1. Zombie ants
- 2. Zombie spiders
- 3. The reanimated virus
- 4. Zombie plants
- 5. Human zombies?
Zombies have become staple figures of popular culture, and the zombie apocalypse is a trope that features in many books, movies, and TV series. But are there actual, real cases of zombiism in nature? Read this special feature to find out.
Zombie. The walking dead. Reanimated corpses. The undead.
Whatever you choose to call them, these corpses that rise from the grave to walk the world and terrify — and sometimes infect — its inhabitants are one of the top monsters in popular culture.
The word zombie — originally spelled as zombi — first came into the English language in the 1800s, when poet Robert Southey mentioned it in his History of Brazil.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the word comes from the Louisiana Creole or Haitian Creole word zonbi, and it is akin to the Kimbundu term nzúmbe, which means ghost.
The word refers to creatures from Haitian folklore that, at its origin, was little more than the ghosts from Western folklore.
Ophiocordyceps is a genus of fungi that has more than 200 species, and mycologists are still counting. Many species of fungi can be dangerous, often because they are toxic to animals, but there is one thing in particular that makes Ophiocordyceps especially frightening.
These species of fungus “target” and infect various insects through their spores. After infection takes place, the parasitic fungus takes control of the insect’s mind, altering its behavior to make the propagation of fungal spores more likely.
Ophiocordyceps “feed” on the insects they attach to, growing into and out of their bodies until the insects die.
One of these species, Ophiocordyceps unilateralis sensu lato, specifically infects, controls, and kills carpenter ants (Camponotus castaneus), native to North America.
When Ophiocordyceps unilateralis infect carpenter ants, they turn them into zombies. The ants become compelled to climb to the top of elevated vegetation, where they remain affixed and die. The high elevation allows the fungus to grow and later spread its spores widely.
Researchers from Pennsylvania State (Penn State) University found that O. unilateralis take full control of the ants’ muscle fibers, forcing them to move as it “wants” them to.
Last year, zoologist Philippe Fernandez-Fournier — from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada — and colleagues made a chilling discovery in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
They found that a previously unknown species of the Zatypota wasp can manipulate spiders from the Anelosimus eximius species to an extent that researchers have never before witnessed in nature.
A. eximius spiders are social animals that prefer to remain in groups, never straying too far from their colonies.
But Fernandez-Fournier and team noticed that members of this species infected with Zatypota larva exhibited bizarre behavior, leaving their colony to weave tightly-spun, cocoon-like webs in remote locations.
When the researchers opened these artificial “cocoons,” they found Zatypota larvae growing inside.
Further research presented a gruesome string of events. The Zatypota wasps lay eggs on the abdomen of A. eximius spiders. When the egg hatches and the wasp larva emerges, it starts feeding on the spider and begins to take control of its body.
Reanimating humans, or, at least, human-like creatures, as in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or H. P. Lovecraft’s “Herbert West: Reanimator,” is a notion that has piqued the interest of writers, filmmakers and, of course, scientists, throughout the ages.
But while reviving dead humans may not be on the cards for our race just yet, reviving other organisms is. This can be particularly unsettling when we think that those organisms are… viruses.
In 2014, researchers from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique at Aix–Marseille Université in France dug a fascinating organism out of the Siberian permafrost: a so-called giant virus, about 30,000 years old, which they named Pithovirus sibericum.
Giant viruses are called this way because, though still tiny, they are easily visible under the microscope. But there is something else that makes P. sibericum stand apart. It is a DNA virus that contains a large number of genes — as many as 500, to be precise.
This is in stark contrast with other DNA viruses, such as the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which only contains about 12 genes in all.
The size of giant viruses, as well as the fact that they contain such a large amount of DNA, can make them particularly dangerous, explain the researchers who discovered P. sibericum since they can stick around for an extremely long time.
Also, in 2014, researchers from the John Innes Centre in Norwich, United Kingdom, found that certain bacteria, known as “phytoplasma,” turn some plants into “zombies.”
The bacteria — which insects disseminate — infect plants such as goldenrods, which have yellow flowers. The infection causes the goldenrods to put out leaf-like extensions instead of their usual blooms.
These leaf-like growths attract more insects, which allows the bacteria to “travel” widely and infect other plants.
While the transformation does not cause the plant to die, researchers are fascinated by how phytoplasma can bend this host’s “will” to make it grow the elements they require to spread and thrive.
“The insects transmit bacteria, so-called phytoplasmas, which destroy the life cycle of the plants,” says Prof. Günter Theißen from Friedrich Schiller University Jena in Germany, one of the researchers who have closely studied the activity of phytoplasma.
“These plants become the living dead. Eventually, they only serve the spread of the bacteria.”
But can humans turn into zombies, too? In the 1990s, Dr. Chavannes Douyon and Prof. Roland Littlewood decided to investigate whether Haitian zombies — reanimated, but mindless humans — were a real possibility.
In 1997, the two published a study paper in The Lancet in which they analyzed the cases of three individuals from Haiti whose communities had identified as zombies.
One was a 30-year-old woman who had, allegedly, quickly died after having fallen ill. Her family recognized her walking about as a “zombie” 3 years after this event. Another was a young man who had “died” at 18, and reemerged after another 18 years at a cockfight.
The final case study concerned another woman who had “died” at 18 but was spotted again as a zombie 13 years after this event.
Dr. Douyon and Prof. Littlewood examined the three “zombies,” and found that they had not been the victims of an evil spell. Instead, medical reasons could explain their zombification.
The first “zombie” had catatonic schizophrenia, a rare condition that makes the person act as though they are walking in a stupor. The second person had experienced brain damage, and also had epilepsy, while the third appeared merely to have a learning disability.
Oct 30, 2024 · Zombies are actually a group of people in present-day Haiti who number around 50,000 and who were never dead, the exhibition explains. Many of them were, rather, subjected to a form of religious...
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Oct 31, 2023 · To learn what happened, watch the full episode, “On the Hunt for The Zombie Hunter,” on Peacock now. You can also watch on the NBC app or listen to the episode on our podcast.
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In today’s article, we’ll talk about all the zombie cases that experts discovered, and we’ll investigate how something like that is even possible. Curious? Then let’s begin! 1. Zombie spiders. We start off this list of zombie cases with something that might send chills down your spine.
