I've never liked the framing of "all things must be useful to deserve money" but also like! Yeah all knowledge has the potential to lead to something more! You might like and want the more but you'll never know if you don't take the first step!

Yeah that's right. It turns out that lots of parasites alter the behavior of host (or vector) species, some way more dramatically than others. Like this funky worm in the genus Leucochloridium.

If you're thinking, "that's a snail, actually" - look closer!

Anyways cordyceps fungus infect caterpillars that live underground, slowly paralyzing them and then fruiting from their mummified bodies. It was apparently the inspiration for The Last of Us so I guess say thank you to this funky fungus

Photo is by Gail Hampshire and licensed under a creative commons attribution license creativecommons.org/licenses/by/...

www.flickr.com/people/43272...

Oh I almost forgot! How could I forget! Cordyceps fungus!

Anyways, I hope you have enjoyed this week's zombie-tastic #WildlifeWednesday. As always, let me know if you have any questions or requests for future topics, and don't forget to check out previous threads! bsky.app/profile/enda...

These caterpillars may look more or less completely normal until the end! They live and eat only to sustain the larvae of another species developing inside them.

But other times the larvae develop internally, leaving the host's body and pupating underneath it, like this Lymantria dispar caterpillar photographed by György Csóka (licensed under a creative commons attribution license creativecommons.org/licenses/by/...)

Sometimes eggs are laid externally, like this hornworm photographed by WanderingMogwai (Darrah Leffler) (licensed under a creative commons attribution-share alike license creativecommons.org/licenses/by-...)

Some drag their paralyzed but still-living victims to their nests instead. Fun! But while that's equally gruesome, we're here to talk about zombies. Sometimes the eggs are laid into (or onto) a host, which will continue to live and feed as normal... While slowly being eaten from the inside out.

There are a lot of different parasitoid wasps with a lot of different strategies, parasitizing at different life stages, internally or externally, and not all turn their victims - which could be caterpillars, spiders, beetles, and more - into zombies.

This photo is by Ian Alexander, and is licensed under a creative commons attribution-share alike license creativecommons.org/licenses/by-...