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Cordyceps - Sci-Fi parasite comes true

June 12, 2008 – 2:37 pm

Imagine you had your meal and accidentally some innocuous fungus sticks to you, then it all starts getting inside you, your brain, controlling you while feeding on you.

You are almost at no point of return now, your fellow mates see you and they know what to do now with you, you are abandoned from their colony to a far place. Now that seems selfish, hey your fellow can’t endanger others life cuz of you, yeah you will be dead soon and the fungus will grow out of your body soon with a fruiting body and then the ascospores in the fruiting body will be scattered all over around you and will infect the nearby one (if there are any) rendering them to same fate. The fungus is intelligent too, it tricks the infected to climb to a top position and remain their till you die so as to maximize the spread of spores (ascospores) when fruiting body explodes.

Its known as Cordyceps

More pics at: http://www.utexas.edu/courses/zoo384l/sirena/species/fungi/

Thats something simiar right from the science fiction. But the victim are insects instead of you (thanks to the creator). But we got some medicinal values too, immunosuprosser drugs that reduce the immune reaction during organ transplants is a quite prominent example of the use of this Fungi.

Though it plays as an arch nemesis to control the bidiversity, now thats a good reason.