‘Zombie’ cicadas infected with psychedelic fungus can survive without most of their bodies
We’ve all heard the horror stories about zombies feeding on people’s brains.
But for cicadas, the horror isn’t such a stretch.
A mind-controlling fungus is spreading among the insects across the South and eating away at their bodies while still allowing them to fly about, according to researchers at West Virginia University. A study published last month in the journal PLOS Pathogens titled “Behavioral betrayal: How select fungal parasites enlist living insects to do their bidding,” details the effects of the fungus on cicadas and its unique method of spreading.
The fungus is called Massospora, and it causes male cicadas to flick their wings like females in order to attract other males, WVU Today reported. The fungi’s spores rot away the insect’s genitals and abdomen and replaces them with fungal spores, according to KDKA.
“The Massospora–Magicicada parasite–host system functions, in part, as a sexually transmitted infection,” the study says.
How does the fungus manipulate the cicadas into behaving this way?
Researchers discovered that the fungus has chemicals that are similar to those found in hallucinogenic mushrooms, which is part of the reason they operate like “zombies,” according to Science Daily.
“They are only zombies in the sense that the fungus is in control of their bodies,” Matt Kasson, assistant professor of forest pathology and one of the study’s authors, told Science Daily. “Infected adults maintain or accelerate normal host activity during sporulation, enabling rapid and widespread dispersal prior to host death.”
The fungus infects cicada nymphs while they spend 17 years underground, WVU Today reported. Once the cicadas rise above ground, the fungus remains dormant before eating away at the insect’s body and mind, according to WVU Today.
While the infection is a death sentence for cicadas, it won’t spread to people or any other organism, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. Coming into contact with infected cicadas won’t get you high either, according to the Inquirer.
Researchers collected infected cicadas from across the country and identified more than 1,000 chemicals in the fungus, the Inquirer reported.