ants – Looking to God

Zombies Are Like…

Posted on March 9, 2015March 13, 2015 by Jack Flacco

The last time I went to the zoo, I seem to remember the tour guide saying how lions, when they ate and had satiated their hunger, a person could literally pet the beast without worrying it would attack. Now, I wouldn’t be so foolish hanging out in a lion’s den, even if I knew they had just finished a course of three gazelles and an antelope, no matter what anyone would attempt to pay me. But the whole experience got me thinking. What makes a lion so different from a zombie?

I save these weird and wonderful questions for my Monday Mayhem series as a way to spur discussion, even when I sometimes feel I could do better by writing about the zombie genre’s cult status in cinema. But I digress.

So I thought today I’d write about the similarities between zombies and the animal kingdom by prefacing my thoughts with the phrase “zombies are like” and taking it from there. Who knows, I might actually surprise myself because I’m not sure where this is going to lead.

Zombies are like lions. A pride of lions can devour their prey whole, tearing at the innards until there’s nothing left of the body. Similarly, a horde of zombies can rip apart their victims without so much as waiting to digest what they have sitting in their decomposing stomachs. Lions also will not quit until they have their jaws firmly clamped on their prey’s throat. Not much different to zombies who always end up going for the jugular.

Zombies are like wolves. Wolves hunt in packs. Wolves will surround their prey until there’s no place to escape. Once they’re ready, they will attack without remorse. Zombies will do the same thing. It doesn’t matter if its a house, a barn or a tent. They will surround their victims, attack and not think anything of it. That is to say, if they could think at all.

Zombies are like sharks. At the slightest hint of blood in the waters, sharks will react. They will hunt their prey, wear it down, taunt it, then move in for the kill. Zombie ears and eyes will pick up the slightest vibration and change in scenery. The undead will hunt their victims, exhausting them run after run. They will not tire, and they will not wait. Eventually, the undead will always win.

Zombies are like ants. Okay, so this one is an insect. Haven’t you ever seen insects in a zoo? They swarm their victims in an attempt to overwhelm them and gain the advantage. One ant is insignificant. Many ants is a problem. One ant can’t do much damage, whether it’s during a foraging expedition or a fight. Many ants will cover their victims and consume them to the bone. I’m thinking of the skeletal remains of a yak in the middle of the Arizona desert. It wasn’t only vultures that had feasted on the body.

There you have a few of the animals I think are similar to zombies. They’re aplenty, and I’m sure you probably could think of many others. One thing though—have you thought about zombie similarities with bats? Okay, maybe I’m stretching it. I think I may have entered the vampire domain with this one.

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What animal do you think zombies resemble and why?

Monday Mayhem

Zombie Swarming

Posted on November 17, 2014November 19, 2014 by Jack Flacco

The opening titles to the movie World War Z contains an interesting scene where the audience witnesses ants swarming. The scene, which foreshadows what will happen later in the film, is so brief that it wouldn’t surprise me if folks missed it. Later in the film, the swarming happens again, but this time the creatures are zombies.

Zombie Horde [Photo Credit: Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.]

For today’s Monday Mayhem series post I would like to talk about zombie swarming—how it takes place, who is susceptible, and why. It’s all about theory today, folks. If you like to talk about the Horde Effect—I just made that up—then you’ll want to keep reading.

Ants are one of the most interesting insects in nature. They come together, disperse, forage, warn and even lead, all by a chemical built within their small bodies. The chemical they possess goes by the name pheromones. Simply stated, ants produce pheromones to assist their complex colonies in multiple ways.

Ants Eating [Photo Credit: Fir0002/Flagstaffotos]

For instance, when an enemy approaches their colony, ants spray pheromones to warn other ants of impending doom. They also spray their pheromones when they want to ward off ants from other colonies, in effect, protecting their territory. They do likewise if they come across something of interest. This is how they lead other ants to food sources. Have you ever seen how ants seem to follow each other in a straight line to and from a picnic table? That’s how they do it. They spray pheromones from the location of their catch all the way back home so that other ants can follow their trail. It’s quite interesting to see this process at work.

Now, as for zombies, they aren’t much different from insects. Similar to swarming ants, the “modern-day” undead have a way of communicating in order to get things done. I’m talking about their shrieks.

In the old days, zombies lumbered and dragged and lurched. They were slow. They were feeble. Today’s zombies, however, sprint, jump and ram. Hard to deny the power the undead possess when they’re in full attack mode. Their shrieks lead other zombies to potential kills, and the other zombies do the same. On and on it goes. I call it the Horde Effect, but you can call it anything you’d like. The point being, like ants, zombies lead each other to a food supply without knowing they’re doing it out of instinct.

I’m sure there are other similarities between insects and zombies. This post only concentrated on zombie swarming. Perhaps one day I’ll also look at the zombie dormant state and its similarity to bat behavior. Until then, ants can provide a great lesson for humanity, not only in organized social structure, but also in zombie swarming. It’s time to appreciate nature more than for providing us food and resources.

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Have you seen ants lead other ants to food? Do you think zombies function the same way?

Monday Mayhem

Zombie Insects

Posted on February 3, 2014February 5, 2014 by Jack Flacco

Ever hear of zombie bees? Me neither. I didn’t know about them until my wife sent me an article posted on Facebook featuring these unfortunate creatures. For a while there, I thought it was a joke. You know the kind, “Two-Headed Dog Discovered in Ecuador.” But after having read the blurb, I knew I had stumbled upon something different. And different is what Monday Mayhem is all about.

Honeybee [Photo Credit: Used in accordance with the GNU Free Documentation License]

In a nutshell, the behavior of these bees is nothing short of zombie. They fly around without a sense of direction, veer toward the light, then drop to the ground wandering as would the undead. No two ways about it, something wicked happened to these bees.

Scientists call the flies Apocephalus borealis. What they are really is parasites that latch on to European honeybees, laying their eggs and causing nothing but chaos to these gentle insects of nature. As the eggs grow, the bees lose their ability to control their motor muscles. Once the eggs hatch, the bees die.

Reminiscent of the movie Alien where the creature inhabits the body of its host until such time that it explodes in a birth of gory proportions, the parasite’s eggs reside in the bee’s body and feeds on its host’s nutrients.

Discovered in Maine in the 1920s, the parasite had infested yellow jacket hornets and bumblebees. This is the first time these critters have ventured to attack honeybees.

Ophiocordyceps unilateralis [Photo Credit: Used in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license]

This is not the first time insects have exhibited traces of zombie-like behavior. For instance, Ophiocordyceps unilateralis is a parasitoidal fungus infecting ants, altering their behavior, killing them to feed off their dead bodies. This dreaded organism infects the ant causing the insect to wander around disoriented until it hooks its mandibles to the stem of a plant and dies. The fungus then grows from the remains to reproduce spores that will eventually infect other ants, thereby continuing the cycle.

What makes the fungus so fascinating is how it infects the ant by invading the cuticles and consuming the non-vital tissues much like a yeast infection. As the infection spreads to the brain, the ant begins to convulse, dropping from its canopy and losing the ability to control its muscle functions. At this point, the ant becomes a zombie, slave to the infection that inhabits its body. The infection leads the ant to a suitable plant where it causes it to lock its jaws on one of the veins of a leaf and die a miserable death.

It gets better. Whole ant colonies have died due to the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis infection. The cure? There isn’t one. Fossil leaf from the Messel Pit in Germany indicates the fungus may have been around for more than 48 million years. That’s a long time for something to have outlasted extinction. Nonetheless, the ant colonies’ only recourse has been to drag the infected from populated areas in order for them to die alone, away from the multitude.

Perhaps there’s a lesson there for all of us.

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Have you ever heard of the Apocephalus borealis parasite or the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis fungus?

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