Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/08/04/scientists-have-discovered-how.html
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So, who has gender-switching zombie cicadas on their card?
Hah! So much for prime numbers!
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Ants zombied up fern and vine stalks by fungus:
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Gender essentialists hate this one weird trick.
(edit: it isn’t a mind-control fungus, so it can’t be quite as cool; but I’m reminded of a somewhat similar strategy in the parasitic barnacle sacculina carcini; which hijacks crabs to nurture its eggs, including feminizing male crabs so that they exhibit appropriate egg-nurturing behaviors.)
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Trading one source of mind control for another.
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Very on-brand for 2020.
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If you thought Silence of the Lambs was a transphobic horror film just wait until you see Zombie Cicadas.
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Also… should I point out that there is a book and a movie about humans being turned into zombies due to a fungus… The Girl with All the Gifts… spoilers at link (it’s the wikipedia page).
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That’s the premise behind The Last of Us as well.
It’s possible that, at the time of its release, the fungus plague was the scary part. Having watched a playthrough earlier this year; the environment and level design built from the starting-to-crumble ruins of an overwhelmed pandemic response were a…bit more relatable…than one would strictly prefer.
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Previously:
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Evolution won’t be kind to a species that eats its host’s genitals.
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Unless it’s in the metaphorical sense of the term.
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I’d submit this for “Most 2020 Headline Ever” if I hadn’t known 2020 for 40 years.
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Can it really be peak 2020 without evidence that the infected cicadas devote themselves to spreading incel memes among themselves; and are actually deliberately infecting their conspecifics as part of a revenge fantasy rather than just fungal mind control?
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Hey, I don’t kink shame.
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I’ve heard good things about that game, but I’m not much of gamer, so I never played it… Aren’t they turning it into a movie?
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Given how many similar parasites there are (e.g. the crabs and barnacles, and similarly creepy ones, e.g. cordyceps, toxoplasma gondii, etc), yeah. I’m ready for some super-weird shit, now. There’s probably a roundworm that turns people into Trump supporters.
The fact that it doesn’t seem to (just) control their brains, but actually takes over the body and makes it do things contrary to what the insects’ brains are saying is extra creepy to me.
It is quite similar but I’d say even weirder, when you think about how crabs and barnacles are both crustaceans. I’d be like being parasitized by, I dunno, a small mouse that crawled in and grew a secondary set of organs inside you.
A TV series for HBO, by Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin. So… looks promising. And probably depressing as hell.
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Well… THAT will be dark then! Looking forward to it!
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Uhm try looking for Braindead, it was about a meteor (Giant Meteor 2020) infested with space ants (prolly some uncles in there too) that got into peoples brains and took them over… it was more about American politics at the time. Frightening accurate 
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I’m not discounting that there’s a real parasite that makes people Trump supporters. We know parasites can alter human behavior and personality, and the liberal/conservative divide is impacted by known biological factors, so the idea that a parasite could push people into being authoritarian followers seems highly plausible.
