Apparently, the Bullet Ant is named the "24-hour ant" because once a victim is bitten, to quote the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, "waves of burning, throbbing, all-consuming pain continue unabated for up to 24 hours". Please bear with me, I promise that this has some relevance to wonder. Another curious fact about the Bullet Ant is that it is only found in humid lowland rainforests from Nicaragua south to Paraguay. A jungle dwelling ant. And what else also inhabits these rainforests? A parasitic fungi of the genus Cordyceps, Cordyceps unilateralis. Now is this making more sense? Oddly enough this specific fungus is found in the same jungles as the Bullet Ant. The spores of the fungus attatch themselves to the external surface of the unsuspecting ant and enter through the trachea. They then start to grow inside the ant's body cavity, consuming the soft tissue, but not the vital organs.
When the fungus is ready to release it's spores, the mycelia, the large vegetative sprouting part of the fungus, begin to grow in the ant's brain. The fungus forces the ant to climb up a plant and clamp its mandibles into a leaf or stem, securing it to it's final resting place. The fungus devours the ant's brain which in turn kills it and the fungus then sprouts from the ant's head. When the fungus is mature, the fruiting bodies release capsules full of spores into the air which spread the spores over the surrounding areas, ready to infect other unsuspecting ants.Doesn't this sound a lot like David Wilson's stink ant? I find it incredibly wonderous that something so coincidental as hearing Sigourney Weaver's voice on Discovery Channel could bring about such a relevant and interesting find. Go to: http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/planet-earth/planet-earth.html, for more information on Discovery Channel's Planet Earth.
2 comments:
Doesn't this prove that the Alien movies are all documentaries?
When I first saw this on planet earth a while ago, I thought it was so interesting. It's a freaky kind of nature that we don't often get to see. I also thought that the other ants removing the infected one from near the colony was very meticiulous and curious.
And I maintained these feelings until I learned that someone I know through a family friend was in the hospital waiting for a stem cell transplant got a brain fungus. While it didn't explode from her head, it killed her before the cancer could and it fatally infected 10 other patients on the oncology floor who were put in isolation.
Now someone even closer to me is about to go through this. And the ant is no longer curious and wonderful, it's a frightening, unwelcome possibility.
Just thought it's interesting that the same simple thing causes wonder in some and a scary death sentence for others.
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