Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert lamp This is Julie Douglas, and
Speaker 1: this is this is a different episode that we're doing
Speaker 1: here today. Normally, we we distract you with with the
Speaker 1: you know, various cool things that are going on in
Speaker 1: the world scientifically speaking, and today is very much a
Speaker 1: reactionary episode. Well it's kind of a distraction for us, yeah,
Speaker 1: because we're we're here in Atlanta, stuck in the house
Speaker 1: Stuff Works office. Um, I can't really get home. The
Speaker 1: highways or are just a complete parking lot of you know,
Speaker 1: cars are not moving. The Marta tracks have completely shut down.
Speaker 1: Some people were trying to to walk the tracks through
Speaker 1: the tunnels, and I believe that is meeting with varying
Speaker 1: degrees of success. But a lot of people are calling
Speaker 1: what's going on now as the outbreak, and we're going
Speaker 1: to use the term zombie, but but really it is
Speaker 1: a it's a it's a misleading term, as we'll discuss. Well,
Speaker 1: the media keeps throwing it around because I mean the
Speaker 1: effects of this parasite seems very zombie like. But look, guys,
Speaker 1: we realized that you may not even actually hear this episode. UM,
Speaker 1: we don't know when you'll hear it. Think if you
Speaker 1: do hear it, things might have changed since this recording
Speaker 1: that it's made first, and we're just trying to document
Speaker 1: what's going on here in Atlanta. Yeah, so I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm gonna just run through some of the facts, some
Speaker 1: of the things we know about what's going on right now.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of misinformation on out there. Hopefully if
Speaker 1: if you were in the area that's affected, which seems
Speaker 1: to be largely um uh confined to the Atlanta area
Speaker 1: and a few other parts of the of the Southeast,
Speaker 1: then hopefully you're listening to to uh you know, your
Speaker 1: local radio, trying to find reliable TV signals. But we
Speaker 1: do know that a severe zombie outbreak has occurred in
Speaker 1: the Atlanta area. These these bombie packs are roaming the
Speaker 1: city UH generally pursued by buzzards UH and coyotes occasionally raccoons. UH.
Speaker 1: They are attracted by the smell of the king flesh
Speaker 1: and UM. It was actually it was at first reported
Speaker 1: as as a flash mob parody of the Walking Dead,
Speaker 1: because as we are, Walking Dead is filmed here in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: But no, it's the real deal, apparently. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: certainly that the pop culture idea of the zombie is
Speaker 1: is something to take into account here, because take The
Speaker 1: Walking Dead for example. The characters in that show are
Speaker 1: dealing with zombies or walkers, and they seem to be
Speaker 1: dealing with it outside of the pop culture idea of
Speaker 1: the zombie. Like they don't seem to have any preconceived
Speaker 1: notions about walking dead and walkers and zombies and what
Speaker 1: have you. But but we have to contend to contend
Speaker 1: with that. So again, these infected individuals are roaming the city.
Speaker 1: They are they they are behaving violently. They are striking
Speaker 1: out against uh really any kind of of non infected
Speaker 1: individual that they're encountering. Um. Meanwhile, everyone else is either
Speaker 1: holding up in their homes if and this is definitely
Speaker 1: the thing to do, hold up in your homes. The
Speaker 1: infected individuals are not going to be able to access
Speaker 1: your home. They're not gonna be able to figure out locks.
Speaker 1: So if you're locked up, you're good. If you're going
Speaker 1: out and trying to engage with them, that is where
Speaker 1: the danger comes into play. Because again, everyone's been watching
Speaker 1: all these zombie programs. We have a certain preconceived notion
Speaker 1: of what this is supposed to be, and then what
Speaker 1: is allowed. You have individuals that are behaving violently towards
Speaker 1: the infected. Uh. So the hs W employees are fellow
Speaker 1: podcasters have have have taken refuge inside the hs W offices. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we're all okay, but I mean there are some
Speaker 1: signs of strain. Um, Josh Clark keeps ripping strips off
Speaker 1: his shirt to make Rambo headbands. Yeah, which is fine,
Speaker 1: just a little weird. And then Tracy Wilson um has
Speaker 1: used her library bar code software and tagged each of
Speaker 1: us with a call number. Well, you know, in stressful situations,
Speaker 1: people handle things differently. They organize, they do some prep work. Um,
Speaker 1: it's understandable. I do wish we could find Ben Bolen um,
Speaker 1: so if anyone out there has seen him, UM, let
Speaker 1: us know. Um other things that we know. The main
Speaker 1: CDC centers for Disease Control compound here in Atlanta has
Speaker 1: uh has fallen. Perhaps we're not sure if their communication
Speaker 1: system is just out but um, we're not hearing any
Speaker 1: word from them. But but this was after they did
Speaker 1: release some preliminary findings. The research continues elsewhere, but we
Speaker 1: do know that the quote unquote zombies are not undead
Speaker 1: but living human specimens whose systems have been hijacked by
Speaker 1: a parasitic organism. Right, this is very important, This is
Speaker 1: what's This is really the nut of what's going on
Speaker 1: right now. Yeah, the parasite seems to reprogram the patient
Speaker 1: over a period of hours, uh, gradually introducing skin necrosis
Speaker 1: and instilling a shambling gage. So the the the appear
Speaker 1: to be rotting, But what is going on here is
Speaker 1: the skin itself undergoing necrosis and taking on the appearance
Speaker 1: and eventually the odor of rotting flesh. Um, they're shambling,
Speaker 1: they're groaning, severely depleted will, and extreme aggressive behavior toward
Speaker 1: all other organisms, typified by a desire to claw, bite,
Speaker 1: and quote unquote eat human flesh, and a lot of
Speaker 1: name calling. There are a lot of name calling zombies,
Speaker 1: which I mean, it is funny, but it's not funny.
Speaker 1: It's because they want to eat your face. Um, it's
Speaker 1: like Don Rickles becoming super aggressive and being sort of
Speaker 1: rabies written. Yes, and we'll get to the rabies question
Speaker 1: in a bit too, because I know that has been
Speaker 1: something that a lot of people have have been bringing up. Um.
Speaker 1: The other thing is that popular consumption of zombie fiction
Speaker 1: again has prepared everyone to respond in a violent, merciless
Speaker 1: nature towards the infected. And this is only escalated the
Speaker 1: unrest people see this happening and it it creates just
Speaker 1: anarchy in the streets. Well, that's the question right now,
Speaker 1: like what is what is the bigger threat here the
Speaker 1: unrest or this out? Yes, yeah, that and and certainly
Speaker 1: they're they're more than enough guns to go around, which
Speaker 1: also complicates the situation. Uh c DC preliminary findings indicate
Speaker 1: that the parasite may complete its life cycle within the
Speaker 1: body of a scavenging organism of some sort, perhaps coyotes, buzzards,
Speaker 1: or maybe even bears. We're not sure. Certainly you have
Speaker 1: uh in the situations where bears in other countries are digging,
Speaker 1: dig up graveyard corpses and consume them. They're attacked attracted
Speaker 1: to the smell of rotting flesh. Uh. And the CDC
Speaker 1: also indicates that the parasite is transferable from human to
Speaker 1: human via the infected blood and saliva. Now, some of
Speaker 1: that is maybe not taking hold of your brains right away.
Speaker 1: Exactly how this is working within the life cycle of
Speaker 1: the parasite that we're still trying to understand, how it
Speaker 1: can how it needs to enter another organism such as
Speaker 1: a buzzard such as the coyote or maybe a bear
Speaker 1: to complete its life cycle. UM, but then can still
Speaker 1: be spread from human to human. Well, in this episode,
Speaker 1: what we're going to do in an attempt to try
Speaker 1: and understand this unknown single cell parasite that is that
Speaker 1: it seems to be causing the situation. We're going to
Speaker 1: look at known examples, scientifically chronicled examples of parasitic organisms
Speaker 1: that hijack a victim, hijack a host, and uh and
Speaker 1: in some cases actually create zombie like behavior in that host.
Speaker 1: We're gonna look to these examples and an attempt to
Speaker 1: understand what's going on now. Yeah, because I mean, really,
Speaker 1: this is the best information we have so far about
Speaker 1: how to approach this outbreak in humans. So of course
Speaker 1: the rabies thing keeps coming up, Yes, and uh, I
Speaker 1: need I need to distress that this is not rabies.
Speaker 1: We don't we don't have to worry about this being
Speaker 1: a raby situation. UM. Human to human transmissions of rabies
Speaker 1: are almost unheard of. UM. The Centers for Disease Control
Speaker 1: speculates that it can happen due to sexual contact, kissing,
Speaker 1: um organ tissue transplants, etcetera. But for the most part,
Speaker 1: humans are actually catching rabies from other animals, from rapid animals,
Speaker 1: and and outside of the United States where we only
Speaker 1: have one or two, you know, three human rabies cases
Speaker 1: a year in humans, between thirty thousand and seventy people
Speaker 1: worldwide contract rabies. The thing is is that there's a
Speaker 1: correlation with the symptoms of rabies and what we see
Speaker 1: outside of our course today. There's the anxiety, confusion, Uh,
Speaker 1: what seems like hallucinations, yeah, partial or total put paralysis yeah.
Speaker 1: And Uh. The thing is is that with rabies, we
Speaker 1: know that this doesn't really take hold of these symptoms
Speaker 1: anywhere from like ten days to a year as the
Speaker 1: virus incubates in the body. So the question is is
Speaker 1: there a way that this rabies virus could have maybe
Speaker 1: mutated um well and be responsible for what we see UM.
Speaker 1: The CDC is saying no. But but theoretically it has
Speaker 1: been proposed in the past that if rabies we were
Speaker 1: to to mutate and and and take on flu light symptoms. Essentially,
Speaker 1: if you had a hybrid of rabies and the flu
Speaker 1: and influenza, then you could have an airborne rabies that
Speaker 1: would spread with the would spread faster, and would have
Speaker 1: a higher potential to spread from human to human. Now,
Speaker 1: virologists at the University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine
Speaker 1: and Florida, Samita Andriansky, she has said that sure she
Speaker 1: could imagine a scenario where you could mix rabies with
Speaker 1: a flu virus to get airborne transmission, a measled virus
Speaker 1: to get personality changes, and cephalitis virus to cook your
Speaker 1: brain with a fever, and then increase aggression even more
Speaker 1: by throwing in ebola, okay, so that you began to
Speaker 1: bleed from your guts. She said, if you combine all
Speaker 1: these things, you could get something like a zombie virus.
Speaker 1: But she says nature doesn't allow all these things to
Speaker 1: happen at the same time. Yeah. It. We're of course,
Speaker 1: we're talking in this about theoretical chimera virus is UH,
Speaker 1: and this is a big part of bioweaponry UH. The
Speaker 1: and the idea that we could take existing pathogens and
Speaker 1: and combine them to make something even more devastating. But again, uh,
Speaker 1: CDCs told us is not rabies. This is not any
Speaker 1: kind of bioterrorism attack or anything of that nature. Um.
Speaker 1: And and when it comes to rabies in general, it's
Speaker 1: worth noting that, yes, you can look at a list
Speaker 1: of symptoms for rabies, and you can you can cherry
Speaker 1: pick the symptoms that would make a zombie, but that
Speaker 1: does not mean that every human case of rabies is
Speaker 1: going to resemble something you saw in a zombie movie,
Speaker 1: or resemble what's going on in the world right now. True. True,
Speaker 1: But the paralysis, the extreme aggression, these are all things
Speaker 1: that again we're seeing. Um. But as you say, this
Speaker 1: seems highly unlikely as a cause of the parasite that
Speaker 1: has stricken humans right now. On how Stuff Works dot Com,
Speaker 1: we have an article by Tracy V. Wilson, uh, which
Speaker 1: I understand she's revising right now, over and over and photos,
Speaker 1: lots of photos, um, how Zombies Work, where she breaks
Speaker 1: down some of the issues with rabies we've already discussed, uh,
Speaker 1: the pop culture aspects of zombies, but then also gets
Speaker 1: into this, uh, this idea that this the reality of
Speaker 1: Haitian zombie powder, which is another thing. We want to
Speaker 1: special specify that this is not there's nothing going on
Speaker 1: out here in the streets of Atlanta that is related
Speaker 1: to Haitian voodoo practices and and sorcery and and uh
Speaker 1: in neurotoxins. Right, it's more of a question of bioweapons
Speaker 1: and could this happen on a mass scale. And in
Speaker 1: order to kind of give you guys an idea of
Speaker 1: what we're talking about, we should probably travel back to
Speaker 1: night because in nineteen eighty there was a man who
Speaker 1: appeared in a rural Haitian village. He claimed to be
Speaker 1: Clarvius Narcissa and that he had died in a hospital
Speaker 1: in Haiti on March second, nineteen sixty two. Okay, so
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty he comes waltzing in. He described being
Speaker 1: conscious but paralyzed during his presumed death. He had even
Speaker 1: seen the doctor cover his face with a sheet. And
Speaker 1: he claims that a bacoor or a sorcerer had resurrected
Speaker 1: him and made him a zombie. And this was a
Speaker 1: case that was explored by Dr Wade Davis traveled to
Speaker 1: Haiti collected eight samples of the quote unquote zombie powder
Speaker 1: that the sorcerers who are using there, and he identified
Speaker 1: ingredients uh that contained some of these these common substances,
Speaker 1: one being a tetrodotoxin from a pupper fish, toxic substances
Speaker 1: from a marine toad, and some irritating substances from a
Speaker 1: highla tree frog. Now, the tetrodotoxin definitely causes paralysis and death,
Speaker 1: and researchers have documented cases in which people have recovered
Speaker 1: from near fatal poisonings with this substance, so they have
Speaker 1: maybe seemed to die and then they have come back.
Speaker 1: So there's there's the possibility that this substance is the
Speaker 1: root cause of the zombie idea in Haitian culture. Well
Speaker 1: in some victims of toxin poisoning often remained conscious until
Speaker 1: just before death. So that would explain seeing that the
Speaker 1: sheet going over your face right, right. But there are
Speaker 1: a number of problems and potential problems with Davis's work. UH.
Speaker 1: So you have a number of individuals and the scientific
Speaker 1: community who have criticized it or even called it fraudulent.
Speaker 1: Some of questions in Davis's ethics since the observe the
Speaker 1: desecration of graves while gathering ingredients for the powder. UH,
Speaker 1: some of questions whether the initial experiments with the powder
Speaker 1: were scientific or control, and whether other substances have been
Speaker 1: added to the powder being tested. Some allege that samples
Speaker 1: of the powder can name little or no TETRAO toxin UH,
Speaker 1: and Davis countered by saying that putting the powder into
Speaker 1: solution for testing may have destroyed the active ingredients. Some
Speaker 1: have charged that Davis repeated his topical applications of the
Speaker 1: powder using rats and saw absolutely no effect. And then
Speaker 1: some individual studied this several of these alleged zombies and
Speaker 1: discovered clear cases of mental illness and mistaken identity. So
Speaker 1: that's a lot of there's several grains of salt there
Speaker 1: that you have to potentially take into account when you're
Speaker 1: considering Davis's work. Well, there's also this idea of how
Speaker 1: much could this can really absorb the powder anyway? And
Speaker 1: if this were to be used on a mass scale
Speaker 1: to create you know, quote unquote zombie humans, Um, how
Speaker 1: how would that happen in a way that would make sense? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you know, the case that we we were
Speaker 1: talking about here is an individual wandering into a village
Speaker 1: and saying, hey, I died a long time ago, and
Speaker 1: I'm I'm not dead, and I'm a little confused, then
Speaker 1: I'm a zombie. Um. That's generally not what you see
Speaker 1: in zombie movies and and certainly not what we're seeing
Speaker 1: on the street where we have peep individuals who are
Speaker 1: raising questions about their their status and and and suggesting
Speaker 1: that they might be zombies. Sure they might be a
Speaker 1: bit confused, right, Um, the people who purportedly have been
Speaker 1: ghost with zombie powder, but are right, they're not marauding. Um.
Speaker 1: And certainly what we see the examples that we have
Speaker 1: seen out there, um, people are not giving their autobiographies
Speaker 1: right right, They're they're not. They're just engaging with other
Speaker 1: with humans in a very um, a very brutal and
Speaker 1: aggressive fashion. So all right, so you know it's worth
Speaker 1: I think talking about that. But really what we're concentrating
Speaker 1: on today are parasites because this does seem to be
Speaker 1: the cause here. So the life of a parasite is
Speaker 1: is I think a lot of us know, is one
Speaker 1: of eternal pilgrimage and cyclical return. Uh. They must leave home,
Speaker 1: which is in a one type of organism, and they
Speaker 1: must travel along strange roads through other organisms. Uh, and
Speaker 1: then they must eventually return to the place they began.
Speaker 1: So you have a primary host, and the primary host
Speaker 1: is is where sexual reproduction happens. That is where the
Speaker 1: creatures are are generally born, or at least the eggs
Speaker 1: are produced. You know. This is this is the home.
Speaker 1: And then there is a secondary organism, uh, in which
Speaker 1: it must travel. And so you end up with this
Speaker 1: this cycle, this life cycle where just as this as
Speaker 1: a man leaves his home and he moves to a city,
Speaker 1: and then he eventually returns home to die or to
Speaker 1: begin life again. It's kind of that kind of cycle
Speaker 1: prodigal parasite, yes exactly. Yeah, all right, well, before we
Speaker 1: go into another one of nature's examples of this, let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break because I mean, assuming everything's okay,
Speaker 1: we still need to take a break and acknowledge, uh,
Speaker 1: what's going on. Yeah it maybe it may be the
Speaker 1: zombie apocalypse for all we know, but it doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that we're not going to do advertisements. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: take a quick break, and when we come back, we're
Speaker 1: gonna get into the examples of parasitic zombies in action
Speaker 1: in the natural world. Alright, we're back, and if you're
Speaker 1: just joining us. We're in the grips of what many
Speaker 1: people were calling a zombie outbreak or even a mild
Speaker 1: zombie apocalypse here in the Atlanta area and in certain
Speaker 1: pockets of activity throughout the Southeast CDC. Even though they
Speaker 1: have apparently lost control of their their main facilities here
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, they are still on the case. They're trying
Speaker 1: to get to the heart of this um. Law enforcement
Speaker 1: is out trying to control both the infected individuals who
Speaker 1: are roaming aggressively to the street and also the uninfected
Speaker 1: individuals who have watched too many zombie shows and think
Speaker 1: they need to take to the street with crude weapons
Speaker 1: to battle the infected. It's it's there's a lot of unrest.
Speaker 1: If you're listening to it, stay indoors, do not engage
Speaker 1: with the infected individuals. But in this episode, we are
Speaker 1: talking about cases in nature where a parasite reprograms a
Speaker 1: host to its bidding and in some cases creates a
Speaker 1: zombie from the host. So these are real world, natural
Speaker 1: examples of parasitic zombies in action, which will hopefully help
Speaker 1: us to better understand what's going on out there in
Speaker 1: the streets. Yeah, and we're going to talk about Toxoplasma galandhy.
Speaker 1: We talked about T. Gandhi before, but I think it
Speaker 1: bears covering this information again because there's some Again, there's
Speaker 1: some really interesting correlations with what we see on the
Speaker 1: streets and what we know about T. Gandhi. Um to
Speaker 1: Gandhi really illustrates that single fell parasitic organisms are capable
Speaker 1: of rewiring human behavior an attempt to complete their life cycle.
Speaker 1: We know this. We have seen this in animals and
Speaker 1: we've seen in humans. Yeah, Now, toxoplasi plasmosis um T. Gandhi,
Speaker 1: as we've discussed before, this is this is something that
Speaker 1: lives in the lining of an infected cat's and testines,
Speaker 1: and for two or three weeks following infection, millions of
Speaker 1: microscopic toxoplasmos so young, which we call osis, ship out
Speaker 1: aboard the cats feces, they leave the mother ship cat
Speaker 1: aboard the cat poop, and any creature that encounters the
Speaker 1: stowaway laden waste is susceptible to accidental infection. And this means,
Speaker 1: you know, touching a litter box, infected soil and actuld water,
Speaker 1: infected garden veggies, or of course more importantly, rats and
Speaker 1: rodents digging around in the poop. Okay, because the then
Speaker 1: the idea is that while the cat is the primary host,
Speaker 1: then the rat or rodent or squirrel chipment what have
Speaker 1: you is the intermediate host where the ossu continue to
Speaker 1: develop and uh, and then once they have developed inside
Speaker 1: of that rats day, then they want to return to
Speaker 1: a cat to complete their life cycle. And they do
Speaker 1: this by reprogramming the rats brain. So normally a rat
Speaker 1: would say, I smell cat urine. I'm taken off right,
Speaker 1: this is a fear signal. They processed this, but it
Speaker 1: turns out that, uh, the parasite will actually cause the
Speaker 1: rat to crave urine and be attracted to it. And
Speaker 1: not only that, the parasite is short circuiting the fear
Speaker 1: center in the rats brain. Okay, so this is a
Speaker 1: huge behavioral change. It is essentially saying, hey, rat, why
Speaker 1: don't you go present yourself to the cat and say here, here, kitty. Exactly? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I mean it is that the parasite is in
Speaker 1: the rat. The parasite needs to return to a cat,
Speaker 1: and so it does it by taking over the rat's
Speaker 1: brain and saying, hey, don't worry about anything, let's take
Speaker 1: some risk. Let's go hang out around the places where
Speaker 1: cats p all the time and see what happens. And
Speaker 1: what will probably happen is a cat will eat them. Um.
Speaker 1: There are even some studies that look at how this
Speaker 1: affects humans when humans are the intermediate host. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the question. How does t gandi play out in humans? Right?
Speaker 1: There's a two thousand study from Charles University in Prague
Speaker 1: made a lot of let me really made the rounds
Speaker 1: a few years back, cut for sure, and reportedly if
Speaker 1: you happen to have a recus negative blood which means
Speaker 1: missing a protein on the surface of your blood cells,
Speaker 1: a toxoplasmosa infection could make you two point five times
Speaker 1: more likely to wind up in an automobile accident. So
Speaker 1: we're getting into ideas of increased risky behavior to the parasites,
Speaker 1: tinkering with how you think and how you perceive dangers
Speaker 1: in the world. Depending where you live in the world,
Speaker 1: between thirty and six of the population is infected with
Speaker 1: us already, so keep this in mind. So if you
Speaker 1: if you were to have toxoplasmosis infection as a human,
Speaker 1: as again the intermediate host for this parasite, you also
Speaker 1: might find yourself hearing voices or worrying over your enemies,
Speaker 1: plots against you, uh, plots against you and your cats
Speaker 1: maybe even uh. And the conditions conspiral even into delusional thoughts, hallucinations,
Speaker 1: social withdrawal, and even impaired movement and cognitive function. Uh.
Speaker 1: These are also all symptoms, just so you know, of schizophrenia,
Speaker 1: debilitating brain disorder that affects one point one percent of
Speaker 1: US population. But they're still also symptoms of acute toxoplasmosa infection. UH.
Speaker 1: So again it goes to show just how much influence
Speaker 1: a parasite, a tiny parasite, single cell organism, can have
Speaker 1: on the way we perceive realityity and interact with it.
Speaker 1: So that's another thing to think about when you look
Speaker 1: at what should be a healthy, living human behaving like
Speaker 1: a wild you know, zombie. Yeah. I mean here's the
Speaker 1: thing too about t GANDHI. Um. You know, in in
Speaker 1: those certain cases, it does hijack your immune system, particularly
Speaker 1: if if you're someone who has a family history of
Speaker 1: schizophrenia mental illness. Right, there's this idea that could tip
Speaker 1: the scales. But um, so far Biologist Urroslav Flagger, who
Speaker 1: he himself actually has t Gandhi. He found that toxoplasmosis,
Speaker 1: although really widespread among the population, is mostly responsible for
Speaker 1: behavioral changes like slovenly dress and introverted behavior in men
Speaker 1: and extraversion and attention to appearance in women. Yes, so
Speaker 1: in a way, it kind of makes women a little better.
Speaker 1: It makes the cat ladies a little more pleasant and
Speaker 1: makes the men a little more full. Okay, so we
Speaker 1: think about what's going on with with a parasite that
Speaker 1: has taken over humans that that are you know, clearly
Speaker 1: very aggressive and slovenly. That makes sense for the male contingent, right,
Speaker 1: but not the females. So we have plenty of female
Speaker 1: zombies are there right now, at least from what we
Speaker 1: have seen from the news clips and from the photos.
Speaker 1: And they are not interested in matching their shoes to
Speaker 1: their purses, right, we just put it that way. So,
Speaker 1: so again we're not saying at all that that toxoplasmosis
Speaker 1: is responsible for the zombies, but we're saying here's an
Speaker 1: example in nature of how a parasite can rewire a
Speaker 1: rat or a human to do its bidding and trying
Speaker 1: to complete its life cycle. That's right, short circuiting the
Speaker 1: fear system in our brains, right, and hijacking the immune system. Right.
Speaker 1: So when we look out in the streets we see
Speaker 1: these packs of zombies, we see coyotes are buzzards in
Speaker 1: their midst generally in some cases the buzzards are swooping
Speaker 1: in and eating on them, or coyotes are dragging the
Speaker 1: smaller zombie uh into the alleyways. Uh. The idea here
Speaker 1: is that that we think CDC thinks that one or
Speaker 1: more of these species might be the the actual primary host,
Speaker 1: and that the parasite is making is making these changes
Speaker 1: in the in the the individual, making them more aggressive,
Speaker 1: but also a little slow, a little staggery, a little stupid,
Speaker 1: and also making them smell like rotting flesh, so that
Speaker 1: creatures who scavenge and consume rotting flesh will go after them, um,
Speaker 1: because they have to complete the life cycle. Right now,
Speaker 1: you're and again you're probably wondering, well, if that's the
Speaker 1: case that it needs to return to the scavenging creature
Speaker 1: to sexually reproduce, then what's going on inside um, the
Speaker 1: intermediate host? How come a zombie can bite a human
Speaker 1: being and spread this this parasite there? Well, that is
Speaker 1: because within the intermediate host um, a sexual reproduction is possible,
Speaker 1: and we see this in the T. Gandhi um. Although
Speaker 1: T Kandi ke Gandhi can infect, be transmitted by and
Speaker 1: a sexually reproduce within humans and my stand any most
Speaker 1: any other mammals that it's going to inhabit, the parasite
Speaker 1: can only sexually reproduce within the intestines of a cat,
Speaker 1: and we see this. Uh. We've talked about this in
Speaker 1: regard to other um organisms before, where sexual reproduction is
Speaker 1: important for diversity and for long term survival, but sometimes
Speaker 1: you've got to fall back on a sexual reproduction just
Speaker 1: to get your numbers up, just to survive a particular phase.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and again, just to try to make sure
Speaker 1: that we're not having information UM being misinterpreted here, we
Speaker 1: are not saying Ti Gandhi is responsible for this, because
Speaker 1: if if this were the case, then we would see
Speaker 1: something that looked like pet cemetery outside with cats um
Speaker 1: just attacking everybody and being super aggressive. And that is
Speaker 1: not the case or not. The animals that are wandering
Speaker 1: out humans seem to be the only intermediate host of
Speaker 1: this organism and uh, and we don't know what this
Speaker 1: organism is yet it's something perhaps entirely new or something
Speaker 1: long forgotten. We don't know, but hopefully the CDC will
Speaker 1: have answers for us in due time. But we're gonna
Speaker 1: move on to some more examples of of of parasites
Speaker 1: hijacking their hosts and actual cases of parasit zombies. Now,
Speaker 1: this one is is a pretty interesting case, and this
Speaker 1: is the case of of court aceps. Uh. What will
Speaker 1: happen is you'll have a bullet ant, for instance, and
Speaker 1: it becomes infected by a para parasitical fungus of the
Speaker 1: court Aceps family, and these are these These infect the
Speaker 1: ant's brain and UH and reprogram direct the ant to
Speaker 1: crawl upward, to to disregard its previous instincts and to
Speaker 1: crawl up a blade of grass and grip the stem
Speaker 1: with its mandibles. So it's jaws stuck on that at
Speaker 1: the very top of that blade of grass. Yeah, it's saying,
Speaker 1: I know you're you're a program to you know, do
Speaker 1: your thing, be a part of the the ant colony
Speaker 1: and do some work. But instead we're going to cancel
Speaker 1: all that, and you're gonna climb up this blade of grass,
Speaker 1: up this plant. You're gonna grab hold and you're gonna wait. Now,
Speaker 1: worker ants who discover this, they will they'll say no,
Speaker 1: we're not having this. This is bad, and and that
Speaker 1: they know it's bad. So they will take the infected
Speaker 1: ant and they'll remove it. They'll drag it away and
Speaker 1: dump it far from the colony because if they don't
Speaker 1: do that, what happens next is pretty uh, pretty horrifying, yeah,
Speaker 1: because within six hours it will be dead and a
Speaker 1: few days later a tube will sprout from the ant's
Speaker 1: head and this is the fruiting body of the fungus
Speaker 1: that emits the spores which will infect a new generation
Speaker 1: of ants. That is why they get them out of
Speaker 1: the proximity of their area, right, Yeah, so that the
Speaker 1: ant climbs up, grabs hold with all its might, dies
Speaker 1: this thing, this little fungoid sprout, splits out of its skull,
Speaker 1: and then will deposit more these spores that would cause
Speaker 1: more and more ants to lose their minds, crawl up, grass,
Speaker 1: die and then produce more spores and on and on.
Speaker 1: And they're actually thousands of different court a SEPs out there,
Speaker 1: each aimed at a different insects species. Uh. Their their
Speaker 1: videos of it online. We'll try to share some when
Speaker 1: this episode goes live so that you can see some
Speaker 1: of these examples in action. I'll try and do a
Speaker 1: podcast notes uh post for this episode so you can
Speaker 1: see these things because it's it's beautiful and haunting and uh.
Speaker 1: And while there's nothing out there that makes us think
Speaker 1: that any kind of court ACCEP is responsible for the
Speaker 1: zombie thing we see in the streets right now. Um,
Speaker 1: if you but if you do see infected individuals zombies
Speaker 1: boasting fungoi protrusions from their body or skull, do contact
Speaker 1: authorities immediately because that is new information that they could use.
Speaker 1: So far we have not seen that. But but generally,
Speaker 1: if you see anybody in your daily life with fungoi
Speaker 1: protrusions uh coming out of their head or body, uh,
Speaker 1: do contact an authority because that's weird. I also wanted
Speaker 1: to bring up the flat worm because the same sort
Speaker 1: of thing happens with ants, where a flat worm can
Speaker 1: infect an ant. And again reprogram it. Call all the
Speaker 1: way up the blade of grass again, chomp down the
Speaker 1: jaws will not move by the way the ant, and
Speaker 1: yes to to just sit there and wait until a
Speaker 1: cow comes munches it along with the flatworm, because again
Speaker 1: it needs to complete its life cycle, it needs to
Speaker 1: leave the ant and enter its primary hosts. Right, so
Speaker 1: it gets into the cow's room and and then there
Speaker 1: it begins again. So just another example here of how
Speaker 1: widespread in nature this act is of going in and
Speaker 1: tinkering with another organism's brain. Yes, now this next one
Speaker 1: is also very very visual, and do check out the
Speaker 1: blog post so you can see an example of this one.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about luco Corridium paradox um or it's commonly
Speaker 1: known as the green banded brood sack. And this parasite
Speaker 1: goes through a couple of different life cycles. But then
Speaker 1: it does all of the really interesting stuff inside of
Speaker 1: a snail. Okay, so, so what happens you have a
Speaker 1: grazing snail. It eats some bird droppings, because that's what
Speaker 1: snails do. They're beaters. They eat gross things. Uh and
Speaker 1: then uh, and then the parasite goes through some life
Speaker 1: cycles inside of the snail, and then it starts pumping
Speaker 1: embryos into a fat, throbbing, pulsate, brightly pulsating brood sack
Speaker 1: that it builds in the snake's eye. Stalks so it's
Speaker 1: builds this sack inside the eye stalk and then inflates
Speaker 1: it with it's young and uh. The parasite also takes
Speaker 1: control of the snail's brain, making the creature actually crave
Speaker 1: daylight and making it set out into the open. And
Speaker 1: you know snails, they tend to keep to the shadows,
Speaker 1: you know, inside of your compost heat. So when you
Speaker 1: go to get some to stir it around it, you know,
Speaker 1: grosses the hell out of you, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But it reprograms allay and said, actually, we're not going
Speaker 1: to keep to the shadows. We're gonna head out into
Speaker 1: the open, uh with our pulsating brood sack eyeball, which
Speaker 1: is really important because that is uh to a bird's
Speaker 1: eye at least, it looks a lot like a caterpillar.
Speaker 1: It looks like a tasty caterpillar. They're just fat and
Speaker 1: full of protein and ready for for snatching up. So
Speaker 1: that's exactly what birds do. They swoop down, they eat
Speaker 1: the ice talk, and now they have the parasites inside
Speaker 1: of them, so it can continue bird primary host uh,
Speaker 1: snail garden sale is the secondary host, and it just
Speaker 1: continues like that. UM, even if the snail survives all
Speaker 1: of this, they stay paralyzed, and that means that they
Speaker 1: can affect other birds, which can affect other snails. And
Speaker 1: it just continues. Okay, So another example we wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about is Dino campus Cottonella. This is a parasitic wasp. Yes,
Speaker 1: now this is a this is a really cool um
Speaker 1: this is this is a really cool wasp. But I'm
Speaker 1: a big fan of wasps. Uh, even when they sting
Speaker 1: me and or almost killed my sister, or sting my
Speaker 1: wife and make her leg really itchy for a week
Speaker 1: that we and we did have an episode about wasps
Speaker 1: versus bees, yes, and the differences and wasp kind of
Speaker 1: came out on top in terms of their might. And
Speaker 1: they're there, uh the frightening ability to do things like this, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're more warriors. Uh so implanting your larva inside
Speaker 1: the belly of of another species, um was We're doing
Speaker 1: this long before anybody dreamed up, you know, any kind
Speaker 1: of xenomorph for an alien movie. This is why they
Speaker 1: have their stingers, their ovipositors. Uh, the ideas, you know,
Speaker 1: they plant the young inside this uh, this living creature,
Speaker 1: and then when the thing develops it's able to have
Speaker 1: its first meal by consuming the creature that it's growing inside,
Speaker 1: born in in this case a sweet old ladybug. Yes, Now,
Speaker 1: if you've ever had an infestation of ladybugs, you know
Speaker 1: that they're the sweet act gets old really fast. But
Speaker 1: but in this case um with dino campus coxinella, the
Speaker 1: young hatches inside the belly of the host um. But
Speaker 1: and this is following, of course, the the makeshift catastrophic
Speaker 1: surgery by its parent to get it in there to
Speaker 1: begin with. But not only does the ladybug survive the birth,
Speaker 1: this parasitic birth from it this this chest bursting like
Speaker 1: an aliens, but there's a little bit of a behavioral
Speaker 1: modification that goes on as well that causes the ladybug
Speaker 1: to hang out and guard the parasite baby as it
Speaker 1: grows into adulthood beneath its protective bolt bulk. And scientists
Speaker 1: believe that its secretions left by the larva when it
Speaker 1: burst out that probably play a role in reprogramming the host.
Speaker 1: Now of these ladybugs survived this ordeal in sort of
Speaker 1: resume day to day behaviors, right, normal behaviors. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: just Insects are pretty hardy and and so they they
Speaker 1: eventually shake off the crazy that was caused by the
Speaker 1: larval secretions. Uh. And even though they have a hole
Speaker 1: in their stomach that will larva emerge from there, they're
Speaker 1: still good to go. So again, this is another example
Speaker 1: of a parasitic relationship that involves reprogramming reprogram gramming of
Speaker 1: a host to do something that is advantageous to the organism,
Speaker 1: in this case, guard the young. I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: like a complete case of Oh, um, I really don't
Speaker 1: want to raise this wasp kid on my own. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna put it inside your abdomen. Oh and by the way,
Speaker 1: when he gets out, he's gonna need a little looking after.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have you do that as well. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then afterward, if you survive all of this, then you
Speaker 1: can carry on with your normal life. I also want
Speaker 1: to give another example of a parasitic wasp that takes
Speaker 1: over um a spider that is indigenous to Costa Rica.
Speaker 1: The spider is called Analysimus octavious, and what happens is
Speaker 1: that the wasp has genes that produce proteins that alter
Speaker 1: the spider's behavior. Right, and in this case, the proteins
Speaker 1: contract out with the Spider as though it were an architect. Right,
Speaker 1: So this is what the Wasp was doing is basically saying,
Speaker 1: you need to build me a house. Okay, So the
Speaker 1: Spider abandoned its own home and begins spinning a new
Speaker 1: shelter for the eventual Wasp larva that will emerge from
Speaker 1: it's carcass. Right, okay, because at this point that the
Speaker 1: Wasp has already deposited its lava into the Spider, the
Speaker 1: new shelters spun by the Spider is key to the
Speaker 1: wasps larva's survival. It has a platform topped by a
Speaker 1: thick sheet that protects it from rain, and the wasp
Speaker 1: lava crawls to the edge of this platform and spins
Speaker 1: a cocoon that hangs down through an opening that the
Speaker 1: Spider has provided when it was creating this home for
Speaker 1: the wasp lava that emerged from its body. Wow. That
Speaker 1: that is an incredible case of parasitic manipulation. In one case,
Speaker 1: we saw the Wasp saying, Hey, you're gonna raise my
Speaker 1: young and in this case, hey, you're going to build
Speaker 1: a house for me. You're going to build a house
Speaker 1: specific and it's gonna be very different from the types
Speaker 1: of homes that you normally spin. This one is going
Speaker 1: to have a ledge, it's going to have some shelter um.
Speaker 1: In speaking about parasites in the animal world, particularly cases
Speaker 1: of toxic plasmosis or these architect zombie spiders of The
Speaker 1: New York Times, author of the article how to Control
Speaker 1: an Army of Zombies, rights that whether humans are susceptible
Speaker 1: to this sort of zombie invasion is less clear. It
Speaker 1: is challenging enough to figure out how parasites manipulate invertebrates,
Speaker 1: which have a few hundred thousand neurons in their nervous systems. Vertebrates,
Speaker 1: including humans, have millions or billions of neurons, and so
Speaker 1: scientists have made fewer advances in studying their zombification. Things
Speaker 1: to think about as as we face, uh, this, this
Speaker 1: parasite infection in front of us. Yeah, I mean, it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's getting kind of bad. The coffee machine has
Speaker 1: been out for literally hours here at work. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: know you your your eye keeps twitching and that I
Speaker 1: can't I mean, I'm gonna say this. You have unsettling
Speaker 1: presence that's beginning to form around you. Well, that's that's
Speaker 1: no good at all. I'm gonna have to drink more
Speaker 1: green tea. I know, I'm gonna, you know what, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna try to find all the caffeine stores I can. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I promise you that you think some of our coworkers
Speaker 1: are stockpiling caffeine, because if that is the case, um,
Speaker 1: there needs to be reckoning. Well, I think that after
Speaker 1: this we can probably investigate, maybe round up some people
Speaker 1: suspects and see see who's holding because because seriously, it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be a team here, I know, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: so we we all need to be on the same
Speaker 1: page here. We don't need to be, you know, taking
Speaker 1: all the coffee in the caffeine because we need it exactly.
Speaker 1: Did you did that sound like a body slumping up
Speaker 1: against the door. It might be, Um, it might be, Well,
Speaker 1: we better we better close this out so we can
Speaker 1: investigate that. I'm just gonna rehash for people that are
Speaker 1: still listening about the threat that we're facing. Stay indoors.
Speaker 1: The effected will not be able to manipulate locks. Um.
Speaker 1: Also pay attention to emergency broadcasts, listen to what's going on.
Speaker 1: Hopefully the CDC law Enforcement National Guard will have everything
Speaker 1: sorted out shortly. Do not harm infected individuals. Again, these
Speaker 1: are not the living dead. These are individuals whose whose
Speaker 1: bodies have been taken over by a parasite that we're
Speaker 1: still trying to understand. It's causing their skin to undergo.
Speaker 1: The crown appear to be rotting in order to attract
Speaker 1: um scavenging organisms um. And it also, recovery may be
Speaker 1: possible for these individuals. We talked about the ladybug. It
Speaker 1: returns to normal life after the paraside have done with it,
Speaker 1: so uh, it may cure itself naturally. CDC may have
Speaker 1: some sort of a cure that we can start rolling
Speaker 1: out very shortly, we don't know yet. But do not
Speaker 1: harm the individuals. Do not harm the zombies. And finally,
Speaker 1: reports sightings have infected U two authorities as well as
Speaker 1: any new peculiarities that may be uh showing up, because
Speaker 1: that might help us to better understand what's happening. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're talking about pulsating brood sex or fungoid procrisions. Indeed,
Speaker 1: all right, uh, let us know what you guys know
Speaker 1: out there about what's going on. You can get in
Speaker 1: touch with this uh, in many different ways. Yes, you
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