"The Last of Us" is tangentially based on the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis fungus. It's pronounced "O-fio-cord-eh-septs Un-i-lat-er-al-is," but you can call it the zombie ant fungus. A spore ...

The parasitic fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, commonly known as the zombie-ant fungus, infects ants and manipulates their ...

The fungus is like something out of a horror movie: The organism hijacks the body and brain of its ant host, mind-controlling it into abandoning its nest and climbing a nearby tree. There, the ...

As in zombie lore, there’s an incubation ... a sort of tubular scaffolding within and around ants’ muscle bundles. This suggests the fungus casts its mind control through bioactive compounds ...

The cordyceps fungus, or more specifically, Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, is often referred to as the “zombie-ant fungus.” It is predominantly found in tropical forest ecosystem, such as the Amazon ...

Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, otherwise known as cordyceps or zombie-ant fungus, infects insects such as ants or spiders. Like other parasites, cordyceps drains its host completely of nutrients ...

Zombie apocalypses typically don’t count ... And it was actually the clip below — in which the fungus causes the ant to climb up a branch, before killing it and sprouting a spore-producing ...

Scientifically categorized in the genus Ophiocordyceps, the more than two dozen species of zombie ant fungus populate the globe, including Florida, Brazil and Japan; scientists suspect that each ...