Prepare for the zombification of all man
or just watch this clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-REOyhRvvj0
This is a fungus in which enters an insects body, disorients him and causes bizarre behavior. It can adapt to any insects. If this enters man...its gonna be bad.
Fungus that could turn insects into zombies.
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Dennis Toy
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Fungus that could turn insects into zombies.
You wanna set an example Garak....Use him, Let him Die!!
Re: Fungus that could turn insects into zombies.
On the other hand, when you do stupid things you can always just claim you have that fungus.Dennis Toy wrote:If this enters man...its gonna be bad.
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Gerald Tarrant
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Actually phongn noted thatSuperman wrote:You're thinking of catnip, a member of the genus Nepeta which belongs to the plantae, or plant, kingdom.wautd wrote:Wasn't there something that affected cats as well?
Fungi, on the other hand, belongs to the distinct Fungi kingdom and is not, by definition, a plant.
I hadn't heard of this so wiki notes thatphongn wrote:You might want to look up the effects of toxoplasmosis gondii in humans.
Toxoplasma is a genus of parasitic protozoa whose definitive host is cats but which can be carried by the vast majority of warm-blooded animals, including humans.
The list of symptoms in vulnerable humans is surprising, including personality change. As an aside I have two immuno-compromised brothers, and our family has cats. The doctor said my brothers couldn't change the cat box anymore.
The rain it falls on all alike
Upon the just and unjust fella'
But more upon the just one for
The Unjust hath the Just's Umbrella
Upon the just and unjust fella'
But more upon the just one for
The Unjust hath the Just's Umbrella
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wolveraptor
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What the fuck does this have to do with zombification? It doesn't say anything about reanimating the dead. Since when did bizarre behavior equal zombies?
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- Herb Bowie, Reason to Rock
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Broomstick
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If you find the idea of parasites controlling their hosts icky-intriguing I heartily suggest the book Parasite Rex, which is now in paperback (I liked it so much I bought it as a hardcover).
In truth, there are several fungi that can infect various insects and cause behavior changes to benefit the parasite. None of those fungi, however, can infect animals outside the invertbrates.
Toxoplamosis gondii can and does affect the behavior of rodents, making them far less cautious and therefore more likely to be caught and eaten. There is some evidence that it can cause milder but still statistically detectable risk-taking in humans.
And for the truly creepy - there's sacculina, a parasitic barnacle (which looks not at all like a barnacle) that infects crabs and turns them into sacculina factories. Among other things, it can force a sort of sex change onto male crabs, resulting in feminizing changes to the carapace and female behavior.
In truth, there are several fungi that can infect various insects and cause behavior changes to benefit the parasite. None of those fungi, however, can infect animals outside the invertbrates.
Toxoplamosis gondii can and does affect the behavior of rodents, making them far less cautious and therefore more likely to be caught and eaten. There is some evidence that it can cause milder but still statistically detectable risk-taking in humans.
And for the truly creepy - there's sacculina, a parasitic barnacle (which looks not at all like a barnacle) that infects crabs and turns them into sacculina factories. Among other things, it can force a sort of sex change onto male crabs, resulting in feminizing changes to the carapace and female behavior.
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. Leonard Nimoy.
Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy
Sam Vimes Theory of Economic Injustice
Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy
Sam Vimes Theory of Economic Injustice
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Admiral Valdemar
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I love these parasites. When we were doing parasitology and symbiosis for environmental microbiology, I always made a point of bringing up such organisms and it seems the lecturer I had was intrigued by them too. There's a good BBC documentary which features some of these buggers in action.
It's also the basis for Resident Evil 4 and the idea of a natural parasite tinkered with to make your own army of followers is tantalising.
It's also the basis for Resident Evil 4 and the idea of a natural parasite tinkered with to make your own army of followers is tantalising.
What shit are you smoking and where can I get some?Xeriar wrote:Wasn't there a disease (a fungus or somesuch) recently discovered to cause schizophrenia and believed to have potentially infected half the world's population?
Either you are highly gullible, in which case I have some future beach front property to sell you... or might need a lesson in the fact that just because it's on the news, it's not true.
"A cult is a religion with no political power." -Tom Wolfe
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Ariphaos
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Why is it so odd? Herpes Simplex 1 is present in some 80% of the American population and 'over 75% of the UK population'... and yet, we would hardly even know about it but for the 10-15% of those with occasional breakouts and the much rarer, more serious cases.Mr Bean wrote:What shit are you smoking and where can I get some?
Either you are highly gullible, in which case I have some future beach front property to sell you... or might need a lesson in the fact that just because it's on the news, it's not true.
You can be skeptical all you want - I am merely inquiring if anyone else is familiar with the article because it's been awhile - just that it's more recent than this discussion for example.
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GrandMasterTerwynn
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There are some strange, possibly coincidental correlations between being infected with the toxoplasma parasites mentioned earlier in the thread, and schizophrenia. For example: The mental symptoms induced by an acute Toxoplasmosis gondii infestation mesh well with those of schizophrenia. Including damage to the sorts of gilial cells in the brain that is noted in schizophrenia. Oddly enough, some of the same antipsychosis drugs used to treat schizophrenia also stop the parasite dead in its tracks. And between one third to two-thirds of the world's population may be carrying the parasite.Xeriar wrote:Wasn't there a disease (a fungus or somesuch) recently discovered to cause schizophrenia and believed to have potentially infected half the world's population?
Tales of the Known Worlds:
2070s - The Seventy-Niners ... 3500s - Fair as Death ... 4900s - Against Improbable Odds V 1.0
2070s - The Seventy-Niners ... 3500s - Fair as Death ... 4900s - Against Improbable Odds V 1.0
This one is positively frightening 
. I'm never going anywhere near Guatemala 
...
I, for one, welcome our new Goa'uld overlords
.
. I'm never going anywhere near Guatemala ...I, for one, welcome our new Goa'uld overlords
.
From here: HERE
SACCULINA CARCINI, A BARNACLE THAT MORPHS INTO PLANTLIKE ROOTS, is not the kind of organism that commands immediate respect. Indeed, at first glance Sacculina appears to slide down the ladder of evolution during its brief lifetime. Biologists are just beginning to realize that this backward-looking creature is a powerhouse in disguise.
Sacculina starts life as a free-swimming larva. Through a microscope, the tiny crustacean looks like a teardrop equipped with fluttering legs and a pair of dark eyespots. Nineteenth-century biologists thought Sacculina was a hermaphrodite, but in fact it comes in two sexes. The female larva is the first to colonize its host, the crab. Sense organs on the female Sacculina's legs catch the scent of a crab, and she dances through the water until she lands on its armor. She crawls along an arm as the crab twitches in irritation--or perhaps the crustacean equivalent of panic--until she comes to a joint on the arm where the hard exoskeleton bends at a soft chink. There she looks for the small hairs that sprout out of the crab's arm, each anchored in its own hole. She jabs a long hollow dagger through one of the holes, and through it squirts a blob made up of a few cells.
The injection, which takes only a few seconds, is a variation on the molting that crustaceans and insects go through in order to grow. For example, a cicada sitting in a tree separates a thin outer husk from the rest of its body and then pushes its way out of the shell, emerging with a new, soft exoskeleton that stretches throughout the insect's growth spurt. In the case of the female Sacculina, however, most of her body becomes the husk that is left behind. The part that lives on looks less like a barnacle than like a microscopic slug.
The slug plunges into the depth of the crab. In time it settles in the crab's underside and grows, forming a bulge in its shell and sprouting a set of rootlike tendrils, which spread throughout the crab's body, even wrapping around its eyestalks. Covered with fine, fleshy fingers much like the ones lining the human intestine, these roots draw in nutrients dissolved in the crab's blood. Remarkably, this gross invasion fails to trigger any immune response in the crab, which continues to wander through the surf, eating clams and mussels.
Meanwhile, the female Sacculina continues to grow, and the bulge in the crab's underside turns into a knob. As the crab scuttles around, the knob's outer layer slowly chips away, revealing a portal. Sacculina will remain at this stage for the rest of her life, unless a male larva lands on the crab and finds the knob's pin-size opening. It's too small for him to fit into, and so, like the female before him, he molts off most of himself, injecting the vestige into the hole. This male cargo--a spiny, reddish-brown torpedo 1/100,000 inch long--slips into a pulsing, throbbing canal, which carries him deep into the female's body. He casts off his spiny coat as he goes and in 10 hours ends up at the bottom of the canal. There he fuses to the female's visceral sac and begins making sperm. There are two of these wells in each female Sacculina, and she typically carries two males with her for her entire life. They endlessly fertilize her eggs, and every few weeks she produces thousands of new Sacculina larvae.
Eventually, the crab begins to change into a new sort of creature, one that exists to serve the parasite. It can no longer do the things that would get in the way of Sacculina's growth. It stops molting and growing, which would funnel away energy from the parasite. Crabs can typically escape from predators by severing a claw and regrowing it later on. Crabs carrying Sacculina can lose a claw, but they can't grow a new one in its place. And while other crabs mate and produce new generations, parasitized crabs simply go on eating and eating. They have been spayed by the parasite.
Despite having been castrated, the crab doesn't lose its urge to nurture. It simply directs its affection toward the parasite. A healthy female crab carries her fertilized eggs in a brood pouch on her underside, and as her eggs mature she carefully grooms the pouch, scraping away algae and fungi. When the crab larvae hatch and need to escape, their mother finds a high rock on which to stand, then bobs up and down to release them from the pouch into the ocean current, waving her claws to stir up more flow. The knob that Sacculina forms sits exactly where the crab's brood pouch would be, and the crab treats the parasite knob as such.
She strokes it clean as the larvae grow, and when they are ready to emerge she forces them out in pulses, shooting out heavy clouds of parasites. As they spray out from her body, she waves her claws to help them on their way. Male crabs succumb to Sacculina's powers as well. Males normally develop a narrow abdomen, but infected males grow abdomens as wide as those of females, wide enough to accommodate a brood pouch or a Sacculina knob. A male crab even acts as if he had a female's brood pouch, grooming it as the parasite larvae grow and bobbing in the waves to release them.
SACCULINA CARCINI, A BARNACLE THAT MORPHS INTO PLANTLIKE ROOTS, is not the kind of organism that commands immediate respect. Indeed, at first glance Sacculina appears to slide down the ladder of evolution during its brief lifetime. Biologists are just beginning to realize that this backward-looking creature is a powerhouse in disguise.
Sacculina starts life as a free-swimming larva. Through a microscope, the tiny crustacean looks like a teardrop equipped with fluttering legs and a pair of dark eyespots. Nineteenth-century biologists thought Sacculina was a hermaphrodite, but in fact it comes in two sexes. The female larva is the first to colonize its host, the crab. Sense organs on the female Sacculina's legs catch the scent of a crab, and she dances through the water until she lands on its armor. She crawls along an arm as the crab twitches in irritation--or perhaps the crustacean equivalent of panic--until she comes to a joint on the arm where the hard exoskeleton bends at a soft chink. There she looks for the small hairs that sprout out of the crab's arm, each anchored in its own hole. She jabs a long hollow dagger through one of the holes, and through it squirts a blob made up of a few cells.
The injection, which takes only a few seconds, is a variation on the molting that crustaceans and insects go through in order to grow. For example, a cicada sitting in a tree separates a thin outer husk from the rest of its body and then pushes its way out of the shell, emerging with a new, soft exoskeleton that stretches throughout the insect's growth spurt. In the case of the female Sacculina, however, most of her body becomes the husk that is left behind. The part that lives on looks less like a barnacle than like a microscopic slug.
The slug plunges into the depth of the crab. In time it settles in the crab's underside and grows, forming a bulge in its shell and sprouting a set of rootlike tendrils, which spread throughout the crab's body, even wrapping around its eyestalks. Covered with fine, fleshy fingers much like the ones lining the human intestine, these roots draw in nutrients dissolved in the crab's blood. Remarkably, this gross invasion fails to trigger any immune response in the crab, which continues to wander through the surf, eating clams and mussels.
Meanwhile, the female Sacculina continues to grow, and the bulge in the crab's underside turns into a knob. As the crab scuttles around, the knob's outer layer slowly chips away, revealing a portal. Sacculina will remain at this stage for the rest of her life, unless a male larva lands on the crab and finds the knob's pin-size opening. It's too small for him to fit into, and so, like the female before him, he molts off most of himself, injecting the vestige into the hole. This male cargo--a spiny, reddish-brown torpedo 1/100,000 inch long--slips into a pulsing, throbbing canal, which carries him deep into the female's body. He casts off his spiny coat as he goes and in 10 hours ends up at the bottom of the canal. There he fuses to the female's visceral sac and begins making sperm. There are two of these wells in each female Sacculina, and she typically carries two males with her for her entire life. They endlessly fertilize her eggs, and every few weeks she produces thousands of new Sacculina larvae.
Eventually, the crab begins to change into a new sort of creature, one that exists to serve the parasite. It can no longer do the things that would get in the way of Sacculina's growth. It stops molting and growing, which would funnel away energy from the parasite. Crabs can typically escape from predators by severing a claw and regrowing it later on. Crabs carrying Sacculina can lose a claw, but they can't grow a new one in its place. And while other crabs mate and produce new generations, parasitized crabs simply go on eating and eating. They have been spayed by the parasite.
Despite having been castrated, the crab doesn't lose its urge to nurture. It simply directs its affection toward the parasite. A healthy female crab carries her fertilized eggs in a brood pouch on her underside, and as her eggs mature she carefully grooms the pouch, scraping away algae and fungi. When the crab larvae hatch and need to escape, their mother finds a high rock on which to stand, then bobs up and down to release them from the pouch into the ocean current, waving her claws to stir up more flow. The knob that Sacculina forms sits exactly where the crab's brood pouch would be, and the crab treats the parasite knob as such.
She strokes it clean as the larvae grow, and when they are ready to emerge she forces them out in pulses, shooting out heavy clouds of parasites. As they spray out from her body, she waves her claws to help them on their way. Male crabs succumb to Sacculina's powers as well. Males normally develop a narrow abdomen, but infected males grow abdomens as wide as those of females, wide enough to accommodate a brood pouch or a Sacculina knob. A male crab even acts as if he had a female's brood pouch, grooming it as the parasite larvae grow and bobbing in the waves to release them.
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Listen to my music! http://www.soundclick.com/nihilanth
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Shroom Man 777
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Toxoplasma's effects:
# Increased risk taking behavior
# Slower reactions
# Feelings of insecurity and self-doubt
# Neuroticism
Shit. I think I'm fucked...
# Increased risk taking behavior
# Slower reactions
# Feelings of insecurity and self-doubt
# Neuroticism
Shit. I think I'm fucked...
"DO YOU WORSHIP HOMOSEXUALS?" - Curtis Saxton (source)shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN!
Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people
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spikenigma
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Admiral Valdemar
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None whatsoever. I doubt it even warrants medical research funding, to say nothing of the problems in fighting something on the wrong side of the blood-brain barrier.spikenigma wrote:
I asked this on another forum but is there any way to get rid of it?
And this is why parasitism is the most successful life stratagem.
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wolveraptor
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Increased risk taking behviour and self-doubt? I thought those were antithetical. How can they be symptoms in one person simultaneously. Is it similar to manic-depressive tendencies?
"If one needed proof that a guitar was more than wood and string, that a song was more than notes and words, and that a man could be more than a name and a few faded pictures, then Robert Johnson’s recordings were all one could ask for."
- Herb Bowie, Reason to Rock
- Herb Bowie, Reason to Rock
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Admiral Valdemar
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Taking antibiotics only really works on bacteria. For protozoans and fungi, they are eukaryotes like our own cells, which means it's much harder finding something to attack. Bacteria being different to us means the chemicals have no effect on our biology, but when your enemy is like you, you run into treatment problems. That's why malaria is a bitch to be rid of.fgalkin wrote:I thought they had antibiotics and shit for it. Or am I wrong here?
Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin
They could experience both simultaneously if they also don't care about surviving the risks, if the parasite suppresses the will to live because its life cycle demands that the host get eaten for example.wolveraptor wrote:Increased risk taking behviour and self-doubt? I thought those were antithetical. How can they be symptoms in one person simultaneously. Is it similar to manic-depressive tendencies?
"Do I really look like a guy with a plan? Y'know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it! Y'know, I just do things..." --The Joker