Friends of the crypt, get the ratchets out of the closet and the chainsaws from the cellar the ants zombie apocalypse is here! Four new types of mushrooms have been discovered in the Brazilian rainforest that turn ants into tiny monsters that could have sprung from George A. Romero's films.
Originally it was thought that there was only one species, called Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, but David Hughes, an entomologist at Penn State University, and his colleagues discovered that there are as many as four different species of this fungus that grows from a growth on the ant's prey. These particular types of fungus take over the ant's brain, using mind-altering chemicals and controlling the ant, then killing it once they have acted on the fungus's bidding. "Similar to the fungus that LSD comes from," Hughes said, "of course they produce a lot of other interesting chemicals."
How these types of fungi get control of the ants is still a mystery. But this will certainly soon be revealed by an (army) scientist, because after all you have to prepare for World War Z ...