Episode
Cretaceous zombie ants
- Podcast
- The Fossil Files
- Published
- Oct 21, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 2191
- Processing state
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Summary
Cordyceps is a weird fungus that can take over the brain of ants and spiders causing them to go zombie and commit suicide in order to spread disease. Weirder still, some new fossils from the Cretaceous have directly captured this nightmarish behaviour for the first time. We take a look at these interesting fossils, their potentially shady origin story, and their implications for reconstructing evolution of this unsual parasitic behaviour. Side-note: did fungus cause the extinction of dinosaurs? The main paper discussed this week is by Yuhui Zhuang and colleagues "Cretaceous entomopathogenic fungi illuminate the early evolution of insect–fungal associations" published in Proceedings of the Royal Soceiy B in June 2025, ( https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2025.0407) , free version here .