Mood:  on fire

Zombie Ants

Looks like researchers in Texas are more scared of some damage to electrical equipment than hordes of living dead insects! Scary!

Living Dead Ants

Stock up on food and water! Load your guns! Bust out the Raid! The end is coming!!!

I Googled "Zombie Ants". I found a video of them on You Tube.

Zombie Ants Video

This is called biotic pollution. It is the introduction of alien species into an ecosystem.

"In many regions, these new colonists are running wild, disrupting the dynamics of ecosystems, pushing native species towards extinction, and causing billions of dollars of direct damage to human enterprises." Quoted from "Alien Species in North America and Hawaii" by George W. Cox.

Alien Species in North America

In Northwest Montana they worry about this all the time with zebra mussels.

Flathead Lakers and zebra mussels

It's a shame that a government funded organization (Texas A&M) would encourage this sort of thing. Somebody's tax dollars went into this.

They've already released 4 species of the fly to try and control ant population.  This could have dire consequences. The mongoose in Hawaii and Puerto Rico is a perfect example.   Mongooses were brought in to control the rat problem.  Now mongooses do $50 million dollars a year in damages just in Hawaii and Puerto Rico.

This isn't the first time that insects have been turned into zombies according to science.slashdot.org.

"Zombie insects might sound like a B-movie plot device (quicktime video) but to the emerald cockroach wasp (Ampulex compressa), they're a tried and tested way to provide food for their hungry larvae. The wasp relies on cockroaches for its grisly life cycle but unlike many venomous predators, which paralyze their victims before eating them, the wasp's sting leaves the cockroach able to walk, but unable to initiate its own movement. Researchers have discovered that the wasps sting the cockroaches once to subdue them, then administer another, more precise sting right into their victim's brain. The venom works to block a neurotransmitter called octopamine with a similar action to dopamine, which is involved in preparations to execute complex behaviors such as walking. Then the wasp grabs the cockroach's antenna and leads it back to the nest 'like a dog on a leash', says one researcher. The team found that they could restore spontaneous walking behavior in stung cockroaches by giving them a compound that reactivates octopamine receptors in the insects' central nervous system. Researchers were also able to create their own zombies by injecting unstung cockroaches with a compound that blocks the receptors producing a similar effect to that of the venom."

With two known incidents of scientists turning living creatures into zombies how long is it before they try it with people you might ask?  There's the story of the St. Thomas zombie, which shows that zombies are real, and alot of people think that the chupacabra is an animal that was experimented on and escaped from a government facility, which shows that people are sick-os.  They would love having a weapon like that.  Drop a bomb with a zombie causing disease on the enemies front lines, all the frontline soldiers turn to zombies and start attacking their own.  Besides the whole idea of zombies is based on REAL voodoo caused zombies.  Go watch "The Serpant and the Rainbow."  Like I said at the beginning, the end is coming!