One of the craziest/scariest things about multicellular fungi: the nucleus of their cells can migrate. The mycellium structure connects the cells together and the nuclei will travel to where they are most needed. If a fungus encounters something strange like a substance that can't be broken down, nuclei will concentrate in that area to try and find one with a mutation that allows them to eat the thing. If they succeed, that nucleus proliferates. They basically stear their own evolution by committee and are profoundly adaptable as a result.
so it's like a system that has different itterations, and when it encounters a problem in one of it's itterations, it then consults on the others as to what it can do to prevent or remove the problem? i may just be repeating what has been said, i'm just trying to clarify it for my own understanding.
@@nightshade4873 more or less. That's the personification of it (it's not like the cells are super intelligent and plan it out). What they do is the DNA containing nuclei cluster around the problem and provide their genetic material to best solve the problem. If one happens to have a slight edge, that one gets duplicated more and more. This process likely plays a big role in how fungi can seem to develop odd adaptations when faced with difficult situations such as eating plastic (as documented in lab grown and some wild fungi) and producing energy from ionizing radiation (as fungi near Chernobyl's elephant foot has done).
The reason why the zombies from Last of Us sound like they're crying or screaming in horror is because the people that are infected are aware of what they are doing, but have no control in stopping themselves from what they are doing. That's what makes this all the more terrifying. Imagine you rip apart your family and can't stop yourself.
As an Ant Keeper, fungus infecting ants under my care, especially queens is a worst fear of mine. One time a Queen Ant I had was injured and exiled from her colony because of aggression from another Queen. A few days later, this fungus was growing out of her gaster. The Queen died and I just threw out her body in a testube. I haven’t had any fungus scares since. It still remains in the back of my mind all the time to make sure it never happens again.
@@Crypto2638 The other Ants were not affected. Only that Queen that was kicked out of her colony because she was fighting with the other Queen was being affected. When she got kicked out she was severely injured. She was missing legs and had gashes all over her. I put her in a testube by herself and she was there for a days. On day three I noticed fungus was coming out of her gashes. She was still alive and walking around though. I’m pretty sure got infected with the fungus because she had many open wounds and she couldn’t keep herself clean. After she got infected with it. I killed her and threw her body out.
Little did you know... you would soon become patient zero for the real fungal pandemic, laying complete waste to humanity. As the only infected individual who maintained full autonomy of the brain, you will have to fight your way through a post-apocalyptic wasteland to reach the last bastion of human civilization and authority - an island fortress off the coast of Normandy - only to find out your brain must be removed to develop an effective cure@@Passarium-1195
My knowledge on the entire subject is limited at best hence the questions…if you couldn’t stop it the first time how do you stop it the second? At what point in the process did you become aware of what was happening and how does that help you now? I’m sure there are other questions I should be asking but let’s just start there…this stuff is crazy and worrisome and I’m sure far worse than what the video game or HBO show suggests…thanx for whatever you can and do impart
The mind being untouched makes it even more horrific ... Imagine ... being controlled by a fungus but still having all your thinking capactity and being full aware of what is going on.
what's so crazy about the prisoner inside its own body is that the developers of tlou actually payed attention to it and in one of the scenes when you're running away from the infected you can hear a zombie cry and say ''i don't want to eat you''
theres also a scene where you walk in on two infected eating a man and the infected woman is crying and saying stuff like " oh god" and "i dont wanna" inbetween bites
If the fungus doesn’t affect the brain that just makes it so much worse. Imagine being fully aware that you’re about to die and your body is moving on it’s own while you watch helplessly.
The comforting part is that the fungus probably isolates your brain from your senses, so there's a chance you won't be aware of anything that's happening outside your body. You might just be a confused, scared mind floating in darkness and silence, waiting for death. Sorry, did I say comforting? I meant alternatively horrifying.
@@amberlennox5618 How did you come to this conclusion? Sensory neurons and motor neurons are different networks. There is abundant evidence of motor neuron control by the fungus. But where is the evidence for the additional sensory neuron control?
@@brianbarrett192 they don't control the sensory neurons, afaik they just infiltrate enough of the ant's body that isn't not clear whether sensory signals make it to the brain intact.
Now imagine that was injected to people saying it was COVID VACCINES... And they know the behaviour the modern humanity NPC zombies will have and they will control masses with several well studied stimuli.
worry not long story short were too complicated, our brains our immune systems its like a microscopic speck trying to fight mike tyson i dont know about people from the future tho
I just realized, in the last of us, when you reach the part where Sam started wondering if the infected still had people inside them without any control of their bodies, I thought he was being delusional out of the fear of turning but he was actually making a lot of sense.
No clearly the people are still alive, they’re brains are being hijacked by Cordyceps which has full motor control of the victim’s body. The people are still inside and enduring the pain
When Ellie encountered the stuck mushroomzombie in the basement, you could see both sentience and despair in its eyes. So probably some of the persons former self was in there. But the fungus was stronger.
I usually scoff at the saying "fate worse than death" but a situation of losing control of body with your mind still intact and fully aware truly does seem like that.
I took a big dose of LSD once together with MDMA, at some point I lost control of everything and could no longer control my body, but I was still fully aware and scared out of my mind. By far the most terrifying experience in my life, sometimes I can't help but feel that psychedelics have huge similarities with these fungi taking over. I know some people view psychedelics as sacred medicine and healers, but maybe that's their trick to lure us in and take over? :p
The fact that the ant is probably aware of what's going down is so much more horrifying than having it's brain taken over...There's a good twist on a zombie movie plot waiting for the horror genre right there...
This is possibly hinted at in Half-Life 2 (and onwards). The zombies (people taken over by headcrabs) make some very distinct noises, and from what I've heard these noises are actually reversed and distorted speech, saying things like "help me!" and, iirc, "kill me!" "Get it off!" Might be another one. It's been years since I've listened to it reversed (un-reversed technically I guess lol), but the implication is the same. The conscious parts of the host's brain are damaged, but not destroyed... and the body is being puppeteered while the person inside is helpless.
As a kid I read a sci fi story where alien parasite gets in your head and takes over the body while the person remains inside. Half the book was a conversation between the protagonist and the alien controlling his body. Edit: I found it, its Animorphs book 6
The fact that you can see the fungus tendrils coming out of infected ants’ mouths in some of these clips…the writers really did their research for the show!
@@frenne_dilley You dont watch many horror movies, do you? There are many good and scary horror movies. It becomes too normal that people know nothing about a topic but yet think they know everything about it... Like "The Witch"! Thats a good one!
9:11 The image of that worm invading the snail's eye stalks, swelling them to many times their normal size, and then pulsating like that, is insanely disturbing.
Idk what's creepier; the fungus controlling the mind or the reality that it never touches the mind and instead builds a sort of brain that controls the body while the host's brain stays intact.
this is why you should use protection so you do not succumb to those zombie making funguses cause if they can adapt to human biology they can make people into zombies🤮
Well in one you’re not necessarily aware or at least you want/are compelled to kill yourself, while on the other instance, you’re aware your body is being poisoned and controlled by a fungus and slowly suffocating every cell in your body
It's not uncommon in the least bit. This of all the things you don't swear on your brain that still affect you. The smell of bacon cooking, shower water suddenly running cold, mosquitoes bites, your lover whispering in your ear, a stubbed toe, angry youtube comments, and most of all, your belly. Hungry? You need to eat. Full? You need to rest. Eating leftover Chinese too late? *Run.* In your digestive track, beyond the simple instincts, lies billions of microbes. They all have an impact on your mind. There is a thing called a stool transplant, and it's exactly what you are thinking. But the reason is to supplement the natural flora in your digestive biome. I 100% recommend you look it up
This channel is somehow cursed by the algorithm, it is getting way less views than it deserves. The engineering counterpart really displays this. I love this channel, yet because of the crap luck it has with algorithms(for seemingly no reason) I only return like once half a year, only you realize that I've got hours of great content that should have been recommended to me. Keep up the work, you got my support!
@@realscience You may need to get a bit creative in winning over the algorithm… I believe it to be an artificial parasitic intelligence 🍄 that has developed to use RU-vid to take over human brains and force us to watch what it chooses. You may be seen as a threat 🦢 by the algorithm since you understand the science. 🤓
@@realscience Hello, I remeber reading about a man called Phineas Gage who got an open head wound from an accident. As the doctor was treating him this fungus thing started sprawling out of his brain. Its worth checking out his story.Very creepy stuff.
@@Tondadrd The problem is notifications are how a lot of people check. This channel seems to not send out notifications despite users being signed up for notifications. edit: the solution to this is usually to unsubscribe and re-subscribe.
SAME every time I hear how we should “get back to nature” I mean - yes, please consume natural food, sunshine, and physical work But let’s not get crazy!
Oh it's not, we all know that. But 'control' and fight back and destroy is not the way, is all I will say. Learn to live, take advantage of and live in relative harmony with nature not like we are doing in arrogant defiant control freak type dominating destruction. P.S. I just got back from the beach which was littered badly and I was just thinking that the types of decomposers that the earth may mutate and breed because humans are being careless and destructive might just be too tough for us in the long run. It is very probable that there may be mutations of viruses and fungi that are custom made to rid the earth of us. They already are employed to cull and keep human populations in check... it is why they mutate so we don't/can't override the earth's /nature's mechanism to control living creatures that live on it's back.
Most interesting thing about this to me is that it very likely inspired the Pokémon Paras and Parasect. For people not totally aware, the cute bug itself isn't the Pokémon, it's the mushrooms on its back which it Zombified. Parasect has pure white eyes, likely meaning the fungus took over completely, if the entire mushroom engulfing its back didn't give it away.
Just to let you guys know, even if cordyceps somehow manage to infect us and take over, the amount of energy required to completely overpower the brains electrical signals to the muscles and the exact amount of energy required to make it move would be impossible for it to do anything, other than weakening you. Combine with the fact you have a natural disease fucking system (immune system) and your body telling those controlled muscle cells to self delete, you should be fine. The most common symptoms of this would most likely be muscle weakness, muscle deterioration, muscle spasms and high fever. The human body is simply too built for something like this to work.
People die from the flu and we have a vaccine for that, we wouldn’t know what would happen with this until well it ever jumps Rabies is the only one that possibly could evolve into some kind of “zombie virus”
I just wonder what is being done by scientists in secret, weaponizing viruses has been on the agenda for a long time now... would they be capable altering and weaponizing fungus as well?
Inn the video she says the cordyceps doesn't target the brain, but the muscles only. Or is that what you're saying- that the muscles would still need to override the brain signals?
@@mattpopemusicIn a dumbed down way, he's saying that the Cordyceps can't just come and give order to your muscles while the almighty brain and the badass immune system is there. 😅
My biology teacher told me when I was in school: “The biggest threat won’t be an asteroid or war, it will be a virus or fungus that can’t be killed via the means we know of. And if that happens, good luck.”
I think you should seek proof of it instead of taking their word on an arbitrary hunch exaggerated for shock value. War and celestial physics are pretty much the only things our modern science has absolutely no solutions for, but when it comes to biology, oh boy your teacher is severely underestimating the human medical prowess. DNA targeting nanobots/biologics, radiation therapy, gene editing, tissue printing, robotics, and not to mention the various public safety protocols that can pretty much guarantee survival if people will just stop being dumb. Oh and "burn the body" has been a tried and true option since every known plague. Saying our greatest threat is something we can't defend against is like saying you can't lick your own elbow, it's stating the obvious, and there is no point to even identifying the threat. It can be an indestructible virus, it can be an asteroid with a 10km + radius, a big solar flare, a black hole speeding towards our galaxy, etc etc. They'll all kill us because the hypothetical included an absolute condition.
Except no fungus can survive a flamethrower and no species of fungus could survive ten million flamethrowers. A virus is dangerous because it can't be fought with military weapons, a fungus can.
This was fascinating! At first I thought it was going to be about the lancet liver fluke, which also infects ants and has a crazy life cycle: it starts with an infected worm egg in the dung of a sheep or other cattle, then the dung is eaten by a snail where the larvae develop. They attach to the snail's slime secretions, which are eaten by ants and at this point the ant becomes the host. It changes its behavior and starts climbing to the tip of tall grass in the evening, and like with this fungus will lock its jaws to it to stay in place. In the morning, a sheep will eat the grass and swallow the infected ant, continuing the cycle. One major difference is that this fungus constructs a whole network of cells to control ants like a puppet, whereas the lancet liver fluke apparently affects the ant's brain directly (you can find scans of ant heads showing the brain and this tiny worm right next to it). Evolution is truly amazing.
@@neugen1019 It's called a perithecium, it can look spherical or more like a jug or a flask in some cases. If you look up perithecium on Google Images you'll see what it looks like inside, it has an opening through which the spores are released. Even though it may look like a brain, this is only because both have a vaguely spherical shape, but that's where the similarities end. Fungi don't have brains.
@@desmond-hawkins what I was wondering in light of the revelation that the cordyceps doesn't seem to infect/control the brain but grows this kinda parallel nervous system and uses that to control the ant's movement is this: How does the fungus receive and interpret information about the world outside it's host or use it to coordinate the ant's movement to guide it to such specific locations for optimal spread without controlling the ant's brain or having a brain or sensory organs of its own?
Creepy but interesting. The designer drug btw called “Bath salt” and also Flakka, gives the user kind of zombie like behavior. Ordinary people strip clothes naked, and also shows cannibalistic behavior sometimes.
Lmfao! You guys watch way too much TV. I live in NYC and bathsalts, k2, etc are very popular here, as are all drugs lol, let me tell you a FACT everyone I've seen who has those horrible reactions to that crap WERE ALREADY MENTALLY FUCT UP BEFORE !!! idc what you see on the news, it's all bs, just like every drug if a person already has a mental illness the drugs make it worse. All that "he was a perfectly normal boy until he took bathsalts " IS TOTAL BS!
Every once in a blue moon we get people obviously on something that come running to us terrified of people chasing them asking us to call the cops, they usually last no more than 5 minutes before running off in terror. I always wondered what they were on until I heard about Flakka, when they went over that part of it I had a moment where I took far too much joy in FINALLY knowing what it likely was.
Yeah, bout them bath salts... ain't no one I know heard of them b4 or since. At risk of going into tin foil hat territory here, so y'kno. But hey, remember pcp or 2ci? How bout khat,synthetic thc or Sally d? You see, kids round here were doing these drugs. We heard about them, then they were available, then, for what ever reason, they declined in popularity and really aren't available no more. All I know about bath salts is some dude pulled some bitey shit, it was in the news and then nothing. Drug fads don't work like that. If you hear about it in the news, you can usually find it or someone familiar with it in the streets. I've never met anyone, except a couple dummies who thought they actually meant the relaxation health product, who knew shit or heard anything about this before that story hit the news. Never heard from it since. Anyone out there able to tell me different, please do since I'll sleep a lot better being wrong in this opinion than continue to live with the nagging suspicion that my nut job cousin who claimed that shit happened near a lab testing zombie virus can actually be right in one of his drunk ass rants...
same lol. i was obsessed w nat geo as a kid, they covered the fungus in like 2010 or something. i found it on youtube when i was like 8-ish and its scared me shitless ever since
Regarding the last of us tv show. This makes for a really interesting difference in the Zombies. A traditional Zombie is dead and we assume mindless as such. But imagine a fungus Zombie is just a prisoner in his own body. So while they attack and kill there own friends family or neighbours, they are sat watching all they do. Like a macabre vr game experience or something. It makes the whole thing more terrifying and tragic.
@@brendanroberts4866 Thanks. We would have been lost with out you. Thank God I thought it was real. Don't assume we are all Schmucks please. I mean what else could be ment by this
@@BIATEC88 im relieved, and im glad it got under your skin to the extent you felt compelled to respond and explain, this indicates 2nd order intelligence.
"The ants mind might be trapped as a prisoner in its own body with the fungus in control". Yikes. And just when I thought Cordyceps infection couldn't be made MORE disturbing and terrifying than we already though it was!
@@NicholasGuccione they don't really, although a fair argument could be made that an ant hive does. the leafcutter ant which uses more plant matter than any non-human animal in the amazon rainforest doesn't eat the leaves it cuts but uses them as fertilizer to grow a fungus which they eat, how's that for irony, ie leafcutter ants farm.
it's not something that happens to amphibians, reptiles, birds or even other mammals so I don't see where cordyceps fungus could do that to humans and even it's effect on an ant is not make the ant go around and bite other ants but to climb high so the cordyceps spores can be released and spread.
Our gut microbiome actually controls a huge part of our daily behavior, influencing our mood and cravings for certain foods that may turn out to be beneficial for both the human host and the microbiome itself.
Years ago I was ill and became very dehydrated (needed iv fluids). While I was dehydrated, I developed an intense attraction to all evidence of water (rain on a windowpane, dew on the grass, the sound of a dripping tap) but even more weirdly I developed an intense attraction to the colour blue (not usually my favorite colour). I presume it reminded me of water, particularly the bright aqua blue seen inside swimming pools. I actually ordered a backpack online just because it was blue, and have it to this day, but feel very ambivalent about it. Definitely my high sodium levels were changing something in my brain.
The fact that the fungus knows in what direction, temperature and humidity it needs and makes the ant clamp down on the right spot is mind blowing. It's more intelligent that we thought Well better get started on a doomsday plan
Yes but to me that's not mind blowing It's like us liking to be in a warmer area in the cold or being in colder area in the heat You understand what you need Same goes for the fungus it doesn't understand why it grows more and easier there it just knows that it does And just finds the perfect spot to grow And this is all thanks to evolution Some of them go to warmer places some of them go to higher places but the only ones that survive are the ones going to the "perfect" spot so their genes get passed down to the next generation but the other ones don't
The fungus isn't aware of itself and it isn't intelligent. Is a bug that evolved to look like a stick to avoid predators intelligent? No, it's just a result of the mechanism of evolution, much like the fungus.
@@eclogite You're probably right, but I do think it's weird that the instructions on this bottle of cordyceps supplements says, "Do not swallow. Take contents of 1-2 capsules and inhale directly into lungs, or inject into bloodstream. Then go outside and climb a tree. Not too high but, like, kind of high. Y'know what I mean? Well, you'll know."
Think of all the people that are locked away in psych wards exhibiting signs of schizophrenia (a common symptom of toxoplasmosa gondii infection) that could be cured with a simple injection...
@@andrew5222 ....many bugs are crucial to our eco-sysyem so without bees for example to spread plant pollen we all die....many animals & critters eat bugs & if they're gone we're screwed.
@@MrGarymola Still fuck bugs, most of them. Some are cool, like bees as you mentioned. In school, there was a small tree with flowers and someone showed me you could pet the bees, so sometimes I would pet them. They cool
I love this video and how well she covers these topics. Hopefully she might do a few more on human/primate/mammal integration/interaction with our microbiome as well as how critical fungal and bacteria balance is for both that and even soil health.
I am also a scriptwriter and I liked the transition from Fungus to Hello Fresh (starts @16:30..)- it has smoothly segued, transformed the story and took over the screen. 😉
Psilocybin is the future for us with major depression, it helps in an incredibly positive way. Wish I could find more so I can keep feeling like a normal human lol
That my man is a profound statement you left there..with a seriously simple execution. It’s going in my stolen sayings to spread with good intentions folder, to use at a later date for sure ! You’re right though. It is like some one enters your mind makes you hand over your car keys and forces you to ride along the path they choose weather you wanna go or not. while steering your vessel all Willy Nilly like…having zero respect for paved roads at all they make you watch in awe and see life outside that stupid self absorbed box that we cling to harder than the dead stopped express way in 5oclock traffic. It’s soo worth giving your keys over for the experience. .
I am a second year optometry student and have already seen “toxo scars” in one of my patients. Acute toxoplasmosis infections can have symptoms of new floaters or blurred vision. It is common for old infections to develop into scars on the retina but are not typically visually significant.
Frankly, if cordyceps did control their hosts’ minds, I think that would be somewhat merciful in comparison to the reality of them puppeting their muscles independently from the brain. At least that way, their actual awareness of what’s happening to them would be impaired. Their hosts’ minds are effectively prisoners in bodies they no longer have any control over.
These things evolves efficiently. There's no efficiency in mercy so that's not something parasites considers. Doubt they're that aware to understand mercy.
@@Cool20xis Well in the video it shows that ants clean eachother off from infections and even take dead infected away from the population, so they may have a good measure of self awareness, at least to the extent of understanding/protecting their health and survival. I would assume they know exactly whats happening unfortunately
@@kylekamins6034 That’s not awareness, that’s natural selection. Tell me, what do you think happened to the ant colonies that didn’t clean each other off and take away infected?
And speak to the parasitic eggs kept at super frozen temperatures until it, along with other machinations, is inserted into warming human beings…. and then hatches, which has been shown by prominent scientists via nano spectrometry. Yes. I’m speaking of that.
The last of us was such a creative and ingenious horror idea, not just because it’s technically the most realistic “zombie apocalypse” type scenario, but also because of the cordycepts infection is such a horrific thing alone, the fact that (and I’m pretty sure this is cannon but I could be wrong) these people infected by the fungi, are conciously aware of what they are doing, but they can’t control it :(( they can’t stop it. They feel the pain, physical and emotional of their new lives, if they can even be called that.
I thought I had watched and learned about everything possible about cordyceps in the past days, but this video was insanely informative and very desne with information. It doesn't treat you like an idiot but still explains everything very clearly.
Although not impossible it is highly unlikely this passes to humans. The popularity of the last of us show made many wonder. But lets say in the hypothetical sense it would happen, we are probably not going to bite each other and tear each other apart like in the show, we probably climb up up a tree and be fungus there haha.
I think the only reason the fungus controls the ant to leaves in high places cause it knows that's probably the most effective way to infect ants. Leaves are their food source, ants aren't too intelligent and literally can't look up lol. So the spores just rains on them. the fungus can get away with more simple tactics to infect like that. But since we're sentient. If we seen, smelled, heard or sensed something off ie. fungus human in a tree haha. It probably wouldn't work. So whatever action they discovered is most effective to spread they would definitely do that. And that probably would be straight up running at us and biting, scratching us. Obviously hypothetical. The fungus wouldn't even be able to evolve fast enough to the point where it can fully control a person successfully before we discover medicine/vaccines to stop it. Only way I can see it happening is if it somehow magically evolved out of no where and discovered how to fully control humans, catching us by surprise.. Or some crazy dumb fuqs 'accidently' breed and mutate parasites in some lab and it gets out.
Also i saw somewhere that something like this wont want to infect all of humanity and basically make us extinct, it doesnt make sense, if your hosts species is in the few thousands you cant infect and reproduce easily so the fungus will evenetually die out. Also i dont see why theres giant roots everywhere like in the show.
I think that if Cordyceps were able to take over human minds it wouldn't go down like The Last of Us as in that story the fungus spreads its spores though biting, where as i feel if it were to happen to humans it would be the same as ants, we would basically be compelled to find an ideal location for the Fungus to grow then die and let it spread that way, so yeah while if and that's a very small if it were to happen it could wipe us out but I don't think we would turn into mindless zombies and start attacking the uninfected.
Dunno, with the trumpers I feel we are already there.. have been for years and no one seems to care. I'm just happy I don't have one of the infected living in my home..
Ive been fascinated with this spore since the video game The Last of Us. I imagine whats going on is a sort of Toxin to the ants body and brain, which drive it to a certain response such as looking for water on a moist leaf or a predatory one that causes it to lock its jaw when it is near death and the spores has taken over enough producing biotoxins or endotoxins from the decay of the ants own body.
I can see how the fungus could evolve and adapt effectively, by basically starting at the brain, using the electric signals to control the body at first, but then spreading through the body and creating its own "mind" and stimulating the fungi with electric signals like how the brain stimulated muscles with electric signals, pushing it or pulling it, and basically taking over the body until it forms an entire humanoid fungus, basically a zombie.
Lmfao if you’ve played, then thats exactly what goes on. You can hear an infected woman sobbing as she’s eating her friend, she even gags and pukes in her mouth but the fungus keeps forcing her to eat. Lmao if you ever decided to just beat the infected up in that game bare-handed you can hear them scream in pain and plead for mercy/death 😂
Being of clear mind and trapped as a prisoner in your own body sounds even worse than what I expected. I always thought the fungus took over the ants' brains.
The ant brain contains about 250,000 neurons, the human brain - 86,000,000,000, each neuron can have up to 15,000 connections, you can calculate the difference in the complexity of these connections between a person and an ant, I think your fear is completely unfounded as an ant is something close to primitive bio mechanism, word "mind" is irrelevant to it, you won't use AI term to a mechanical calculator
The power of an ant's mind is equal to what you think and feel when you touch a hot item and your nervous system moves your hand away. It's completely reactionary and unconscious.
@@DoomFinger511 you guys cant read or smth? He literally said the the brain is the only thing the fungus doesnt take over so nobody cares how much neurons the brain has or how complicated the human mind is, because the fungus isnt even taking over the brain
Yeah, you're going to get a lot of comments from people saying that "oooh an ant's brain is sooo small it can't think or feel anything so it's not afraid at all". But the truth is that science barely understands the brains of any animal. Even with highly sophisticated processors and the latest software engineering, we can't even create machines that can identify and traverse terrain as well as any ant can! The fact that ants are capable of selfish behaviors such as sneaking away to indulge in eating high sugar foods with no intention of sharing should be an indication that on a tiny level an ant recognises itself as an individual and is even capable of enjoying simple pleasures. Scott Waddell, professor of neurobiology at the University of Oxford has done similar work with fruit flies to determine that insects are capable of an emotional range that we previously thought impossible. Which brings me to my point; unless the fungus is kind enough to chemically alter the ant's "mood", much in the same way that chemicals produced by certain fungus like psilocybin can alter and improve moods, then the ant knows that it's no longer in control of it's body, that it's walking away from the safety of it's family and most certainly to it's death. The terror is real.
6:19 this follows with current neurology that what we think of as “The mind” is related to the entire body. We do not think that removing a human brain and placing it into another body would transport our consciousness and personality. If a zombie virus must infect several parts of the body to take over the mind, this makes sense from what we now know about “mind control” and where our consciousness may lie.
11:15 That's the condition Martin Shkreli aka "Pharma Bro" had a medication for! Remember him? He was the guy who was on the news because he had allegedly raised the price of Daraprim - the medication against toxoplasmosis. The more you know... ❤️
Another great vid. The research really pays off. Great editing and presentation. One of my favourite channels with content guaranteed to please. Cheers
Cats do it too, it's so crazy. Or rather, they do it by middleman, turning somewhat disgusting along the way. There's this parasite that can only breed and lay eggs inside a cat's intestines. But the eggs, in order to hatch, needs to exit the host and then go inside a rodent for a while, becoming a a larvae, then an adult parasite. Then it needs to get back in the cat, so it brain-controls the rodent to go near a cat to get caught and eaten. In time, with people living close to cats, the parasite has undergone an incomplete adaptation from rodent to human. Parasite eggs wind up inside the human digestive system, hatches and become larvae that mind-controls the human into liking and wanting to be near cats(!). They can't exit the human and enter the cat at this point, at least not in the way nature intended it, so it's an evolutionary dead end for the poor parasite, but it keeps getting inside cat owners and reinforcing their love for cats. Cat ladies explained, who would have known that was even possible. Edit: It's in the video, in fact. At 10:30-ish. Teach me to start commenting in the middle of the vid I was meannig to watch. I did pause, though.
Most people get toxoplasma gondii from contaminated food rather than from cats. And even then it's usually from cats who roam outdoors or those that eat raw contaminated meat. Full time indoor cats are fine. Here's how humans usually get infected with toxoplasma gondii (from CDC website): • Eating undercooked, contaminated meat (especially pork, lamb, and venison) or shellfish (for example, oysters, clams or mussels). • Accidental ingestion of undercooked, contaminated meat or shellfish after handling them and not washing hands thoroughly (Toxoplasma cannot be absorbed through intact skin). • Eating food that was contaminated by knives, utensils, cutting boards and other foods that have had contact with raw, contaminated meat or shellfish. • Drinking water contaminated with Toxoplasma gondii. • Accidentally swallowing the parasite through contact with cat feces that contain Toxoplasma. This might happen by cleaning a cat’s litter box when the cat has shed Toxoplasma in its feces, or ingesting anything that has come into contact with cat feces that contain Toxoplasma; or • Accidentally ingesting contaminated soil (e.g., not washing hands after gardening or eating unwashed fruits or vegetables from a garden). • Mother-to-child (congenital) transmission. • Receiving an infected organ transplant or infected blood via transfusion, though this is rare.
The "runners" in the TLOU game is horrific. You don't hear the "normal" moan and groan of a zombie, but instead you hear a human (female/male) in pain just crying for help not being able to control their bodies and temptations of eating humans that are not infected... It's pretty terrifying when you think about it. It's actually tragic which makes the TLOU a lot more complex than any normal "zombie" movie/game. When close to them you can just see them constantly trying to fight and control their selves, but unsuccessful due to how powerful the cordyceps fungus is. Man oh man... Resident Evil 7: Biohazard actually has this same concept, but a lot more severe and more of a supernatural/paranormal aspect to it. They speak about mold & also fungus controlling the host completely and transforming them into something so horrific. They hallucinate severly and have no control whatsoever. RE7 & The Last Of Us are tragic stories. The Baker family from RE7 was such a sad story as well.
ah yes, people on the internet rejoice that the concept of a zombie apocalypse might be possible jokes aside though this makes me wonder, if our evolution could've been influenced by the parasites in our past renditions/versions, OR that there might've been a version of the said parasites that embedded itself into the human biology that it has resulted in the existence of our conciousness...
"this makes me wonder, if our evolution could've been influenced by the parasites in our past renditions/versions, OR that there might've been a version of the said parasites that embedded itself into the human biology that it has resulted in the existence of our conciousness..." look into mitochondria man.
@@alexanderklee6357 There is a name distinction but bio-genetically speaking there both classified as a symbiote. The difference is the effect it has on the host(positive/neutral symbiotes only feed off the host to provide a benefit like killing hostile gut bacteria, where as parasites don't care about the host at all and will suck all available life force it contains for it's own cruel goals.
@ALESSA SAVAGE⛱️ amazing how much the world has changed since I don't know the Higgins particle was proven I wonder what the next five years will bring
Genius cat 9000 years ago: "These stupid monkeys are starting to get more intelligent. How about instead of eating them, we enslave them?" Other cats: "Brilliant."
Thats by far the most reasonable explaination for the whole thing I have heard yet, but holy shit is it terrifying... How damn crazy is it that a fungi could fake a new ''brain'' inside an ant and connect it to the body?? I get the connections are not that complex but how does a fungy even store and spread that information on how to grow inside an ant and then using it?? Great content, good algorithm.
I read that the reason that Toxoplasmosis Gondii infectees (human) have a higher rate of car accidents is because the T Gondii reduces fear response and increases risk taking. So, you're more likely to make that left hand turn into oncoming traffic when the traffic is coming too fast or is too close...that sort of risk taking. "Oh, I got this." Boom. T. Gondii doesn't get specific about HOW it wants you to die. It just wants you to die. If there's no cheetah around for you to sacrifice yourself to, then it could not give less of a ... flying squirrel... how you off yourself.
This reminds me of The Othermind from wings of fire. It’s a plant and it maximizes it’s growing potential to take over the minds of different organisms
Makes me think about the Valley Fever fungus recently reported to be spreading in humans. Pretty sure there have been other recent fungi circulating, too. Plagues.
Louis Wain is an interesting Toxoplasma gondii case study. He loved cats and was famous for his prolific portfolio of anthropomorphized cat artwork! In his later life he came down with schizophrenia and his work reflects it, with lots of fractal and LSD like collages. It has been mostly disproven the correlation betwen T gondii and schizophrenia but it’s still worth a google rabbit hole.
There are very respectable doctors that have been gaslighted by pharmaceutical industry that found a relationship between fungus and schizophrenia, autism and alcoholism but to talk about it is “conspiracy theory”
it's probably the other way around.. all catpersons have toxoplasmosis because they are near cats allot, need to clean the litterbox ect.. But we want all the animals.. we have way more fish then we have cats... does that also mean we have the same thing for fish?? no.. ofcourse not.. Then it's our personal preference... xD this is just bs... -parasite
well, it beats being obsessed with human mating rituals.. and cats are cleaner than human males, so there's that. also cats do not scream, get drunk, steal your money, abuse the kids, sell the house, or the car, cheat or beat/murder you and bury your corpse in a field far from home.. frankly, I don't get why anyone still bothers to even allow any human males into their lives. statistically, it's the most dangerous thing to do. give me a purring cat, any day.
Also I just wanted to take a moment to show my appreciation to the person who made this video, it was absolutely incredible, very informative and was by no means boring, definitely kept me engaged and I am a super ADHD squirrel chaser most of the time hahah but I love how you even put reference tabs at the bottom of the screen everytime you referenced something and then you have the corresponding links in the description, I will definitely be subscribing and looking forward to more of your content!
it was sensationalized to the tens and meant to make people scared of something they don't need to be scared of. This kind of stuff generally makes people averse to fungi and mushrooms, which is a bad thing because they have so many positives and are such fascinating things.
I have a theory. What if the toxoplasmosis parasite is responsible for people who adopt cats and care for them? You got to admit it would be a fantastic strategy. If the parasite could influence humans to take care of cats and thus infect cats and infect more humans.
@@carver6794 vaccination is highest in urban areas. You are more likely to be exposed to covid and other harmful organisms in an urban area than in a rural area due to the nature of being so close to other people, especially strangers.
Finally! A cordyceps fungi video that isn't filled with extremist statements and fear mongering. This was a great script capable of simplifying some fascinating biology. This will be what I show friends now when chatting about weird parasites.
This was extremely well done. I'm seriously interested in the future findings as scientist research more on Toxoplasma gondii. I wonder if they could eliminate the infection in a group of people and then see if after some healing time if they would be considered as showing signs of schizophrenia.
Jesus, I thought cordyceps controlling the minds of ants was the scariest thing ever. But after watching this, I realise that it's nothing compared to the fact that it's not controlling minds but muscles. Which means the ant can see, know and feel its body being controlled but cannot do anything about it but to watch itself slowly die a painful death.
Since I was a teen in the 80s and have been looking into fungi for a while, I am surprised that there are no animal-fungal symbiotic relationships. Well, that is unless you consider a certain mitochondria origin story. Can you imagine a breed of animal and a breed of fungi that need each other biologically entwined for a mutually beneficial relationship? Well, imagine a real-world one and not a comic book character origin.
@@himum3429 I always saw Venom as either a form of Marvel Comics's The Thing or some host-bolstering multicellular amoeboid parasite. I had no idea he was fungal in nature. Venom was a really cool modification to an ancient science fiction trope so I loved Venom at the time too. My preference is with the Spawn version of that... mixed in a bit of fire and brimstone. ;) I mean, imagine growing up around Chernobyl and having those with your bloodline unable to process nutrients right and regulate the aging process... except for those infected by some kind of fungus. And that mutant fungus doesn't really have the ability to live except as a form of ick fish infection. But on a human, a Chernobyl type human like you, a human that *can* get that infection, there are no bad effects... quite the opposite, your bloodline's special weaknesses vanish. On top of that, the fungus becomes such a symbiotic that you are completely immune to pathogens and parasites because it's completely toxic to them. It's not as fun as the real-world zombie fungus that infects ants but it would be totally cool. Generations after the initial bonding, those people would pass that fungus down over the generations of their kin like humans all over the world pass down the symbiotic digestive bacteria in our guts.
It’s could happen. Right now for the fungi to kill a human that human would have to be severely immunocompromised or be exposed to a very large amount of it. Or as the last of us implied it would have to mutate.
