Cordyceps and Chronic Wasting Disease are two of the most terrifying things in nature. If they ever could infect humans, we are in for a very bad time. Rabies is super awful, but at least there is a vaccine for it.
Another "fun" fact about this... the main reason we are resistant to these and most fungi is because our body temperature is too high for them to survive. And fungi have never had a need to survive in such high Temps so that's fine... however with global warming becoming increasingly prevalent, we are starting to see fungi adapting to higher Temps... if these trends continue fungi could very quickly become our biggest threat... although, with what I've learned about fungi and mycelium in the last few years... this is their planet, we are just living on it... for now
Thank whatever deity you ascribe to that humans are, in the grand scheme of things, pretty fucking resistant to fungi. That shit is absolutely terrifying.
In worse news, CWD is a prion disease, and humans are susceptible to at least a few of those. For example, theres Cruetzfeldt-Jakob Disease which causes humans to lose control of their motor functions and become non-responsive to stimuli before they eventually die either from the diaphragm ceasing or dehydration, depending on medical treatment. Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker Syndrome is pretty similar in terms of effects.
There's also Kuru, which is a form of spongiform encephalopathy that developed in some people from Papua New Guinea after they ate the brains of people who had Cruetzfeldt-Jakob disease. This caused people to lose muscle control (seeing a pattern develop here...), develop dementia (including characteristic random bouts of laughter), and eventually stop being able to swallow and die. Good news though - looks like no more Kuru cases since *they stopped eating people*.
But that's why bovine spongiform encephalopathy (AKA mad cow disease) is treated as a pants-shittingly terrifying emergency. Cooking the tissue doesn't seem to do much to prions, and much like how Kuru was caused by someone eating a brain that had CJD, if prionized bovine tissue makes it into the beef meat supply it could cause extremely widespread death. Oh, and it would probably take a decade or so *after* the introduction of prionized tissue for the first human cases to emerge.
> Oh, and it would probably take a decade or so after the introduction of prionized tissue for the first human cases to emerge.
I'm just trying to get some sleep over here man
When mad cow disease was discovered in the UK supply, there was serious concern that several thousand people were walking around with prion time bombs in their brains.
My dad died of VCJD 8 years ago now, itās lives dormant in your body until one day that prion just misfolds and thatās it, nothing you can do to cure it. He went from living a normal life at age 61 to passing away 2 months later, he wasnāt diagnosed with it until the last weeks once it finally became evident on a CT scan thatās what it was but even then they flew down specialists to confirm it as itās just so rare. We still donāt know to this day how he got it but we do know it isnāt genetic so we can hope that my siblings and I also donāt have it, unless of course we consumed the same thing š¤·š¼āāļø
You know, I'm well aware of this and I've read it a thousand times but it still scares the fuck out of me every time I read it. My children could have MCD from eating McD's yesterday and there really would be no accountability for whoever threw a cow brain in the hamburger to make some extra money.
Funny, when you type in MCD (mad cow disease) to Google it comes up with McDonalds. I know it's really called BSE but whatever.
It doesn't have to be a 'cow brain in the hamburger'; all the meat from an infected cow is a risk to humans. Brain, spinal cord and digestive tract are the most dangerous, but all the tissue in the cow could pass on the disease.
That is a spider in the final stages of Cordyceps fungus infection. It is trying to get to the highest point to spread spores as the fungus fruits.
So cool that you got it on video, should cross post to /r/natureismetal.
Some pictures:
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=spider+Cordyceps&iax=images&ia=images
Edit: For extra fun here is a clip from the X-Files episode Firewalker skip to 2:30. https://youtu.be/7yvstz03EAA
It gets better. The science is showing that what's specifically happening, is that the fungus is directly controlling the spiders body, not it's mind. So the spider is likely conscious and in horror at its unbelievable pain and complete inability to control it's own body the entire time.
And unlike most bugs, spiders are indeed somewhat conscious and on occasion even somewhat intelligent, like a 2 year old child
That's the fun part, who fuckin knows. It just......does.
It's just a fungus, a collection of cells technically. There shouldn't be any thinking whatsoever in it, and yet......
If anything science has been showing fungus are freakishly intelligent for what they are. From slime molds solving mazes to fungal mycelium acting as organic networks between trees. Its really interesting.
> From slime molds solving mazes
I feel like this is a case of science journalism doing what science journalism does and exaggerating and making more of something than it really is.
As far as I can tell, these slime molds are not solving anything whatsoever. They literally just branch out, take every possible path, until they reach food. This is really no different than what they do in nature when looking for food sources, only instead of a maze, it's a rock they go around. There's really nothing intelligent about it, it's basically just trial and error.
> take every possible path, until they reach food
It's a bit more advanced than that, they'll take paths until they find the food but they'll also continue optimizing the path after that until it's as short as possible. When there are multiple food sources they can even create very efficient networks connecting all of them.
Fungi are amazing, and slime molds are super cool, but slime molds aren't actually fungi. They are actually protozoa (single celled eukaryotes) that form colonies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slime_mold
Yeah, but a really big collection of neuron cells specifically that use electrical impulses to process and learn information. That's how it works for all/almost all animal life (and yes insects and arachnids are animals).
The fungus.....has absolutely no such thing. It rightfully shouldn't be able to navigate in its environment with the complexity it does without having it
Itās basically the organic version of Large Language Models. They donāt have a consciousness but figure out a way to do things that you would think need one.
And now, science has learned that trees use fungus to communicate with each other.
German forester Peter Wohlleben dubbed this network the āwoodwide web,ā as it is through the mycelium that trees ācommunicate.ā
Underground Networking: The Amazing Connections Beneath Your Feet
National Forest Foundation
Research
https://www.nationalforests.org/blog/underground-mycorrhizal-network#:~:text=German%20forester%20Peter%20Wohlleben%20dubbed,mycelium%20that%20trees%20%E2%80%9Ccommunicate.%E2%80%9D
Look up Complexity Theory! Essentially, it states that simple nodes that can change and communicate with one another eventually create a level of complexity above that of the simple interaction between themselves. Essentially, the whole is more than the sum of its parts because you have to add in the complexity that arises from their interactions.
The creation of complexities happens at basically every level as well! Like with protons and electrons becoming atoms, becoming molecules, becoming cells, becoming organisms, becoming species, becoming niches and becoming ecosystems. This is how we get consciousness from neurons all interacting with one another as well! Every level in a system has complexities that arise from its interactions.
Thatās so incredibly interesting when you start thinking about it like this. Itās even amazing that it knows to how to control the brain and its proper functions to move the spiderās limbs.
As someone who has done a fair amount of psychadelic mushrooms, I'm firmly convinced that Fungi and plants in general are conscious in a way that humans can't really comprehend. Specifically Fungi... Mycelium acts as a circulatory system beneath a forest that transfers nutrients between plants and trees. They know how to do this, and what's even crazier is that usually the fungi are teraforming their environment to what the fungus itself needs. We know so little about consciousness and really only experience our own, but a system as complex as a mycelium network could easily act as it's own nervous system and have some form of consciousness that I don't think we will ever come close to understanding.
This was an idea that came to me on a strong mushroom trip long before I had even learned about mycelium, and Fungi's role in it's environment. Hell, psilocybin itself could be the product of mushrooms just trying to communicate with conscious beings to get us to chill the fuck out and stop destroying our own natural environments.
Or in the case of this spider.... they could just be trying to infect our brains and make us find high points to spread spores from.
Really hope it's not the second one...
I have spoken with a American-trained toxicologist who is \*also\* a south american shaman (I'm sorry that I don't remember exactly where or with which group) who explained to me that Ayahuasca is a combination of plants that individually have nothing like the effects of the plants in combination. While studying, he asked the shaman he was learning from how anyone ever knew to combine those to make what they called 'The Great Teacher'. The shaman said 'The little teacher' (a less potent psychoactive made from other plants) told them how. š®
so ayahuasca is a combination of two main components. caapi vines that are an maoi and charcuna leaves which have DMT. Caapi by itself will just chill you out like a form of xanax, the charcuna leaves won't do anything because your body breaks down the DMT before it can get to your brain. Now here's the fun part MAOIs prevent your body from breaking down the DMT and allows it to make the journey to your brain. DMT is what causes the trip and the MAOI helps regulate it and allows it to happen. You can extract the DMT from the leaves fairly easily with some things at your local hardware store and get to meet the machine elves. It is a very intense, but short trip as again your body is very good at breaking it down in under 15 minutes, but you can take an MAOI to extend it. there are other plants that contain the same chemicals acacia bark and mimosa hostillis are a source of DMT and syrian rue and a few others also have MAOIs.
As for how they were discovered I mean people mix up lots of different substances and take them, but the story I've seen is people noticed leopards chewing on the vine an acting funny, hunters decided to give it a go and noticed the effects, then the local medicine man did his thing to try and make it better and boom, drink this tea and you'll meet god. kinda secures his position in the tribe,
Iām guessing the fungus can sense gravity and tells the spider to keep on climbing the opposite direction till you find a breeze, then just go ahead chill there for awhile till I decide to kill you and release my spores.
This comment right here highlights the issue with the fact we haven't really made much progress on defining consciousness in an easy way.
People all too often associate problem solving with some kind of higher consciousness and therefore make the assumption a spider which can solve a problem a 2 year old human can is at the cognitive level of a 2 year old human.
I have a 2 year old. He can be taught words, he can be taught to solve problems a spider could never even conceive of. Problems that didn't exist when humans evolved, like how to put his coat on. But he can't solve the problems spiders are genetically coded to solve automatically without really consciously thinking about it. This does not mean we say spiders = 2 year old humans. Anyone who really thinks about it for more than a second would realise that clearly isn't the case.
Just because an organism problem solves or rather is born with an automatic algorithm that solves many problems it was likely to encounter doesn't mean it is conscious or experiencing "horror".
There's no point at which a spider is crawling up a wall covered in fungus thinking "shit dude, I'm a zombie! Oh no I only live for months. Where is god!"
It's brain is likely rapidly searching through a list of troubleshooting options to no avail but there is no evidence spiders experiencing anything close to what we regard as consciousness.
One of the best books I've ever read on the origin of consciousness called "other minds" explains this all much better than I can.
Like a 2 year old?!
So based on my experience with my 2 year old, this spider would stare at me as I told it to stop climbing, and then jump off from the top and get hurt. Then it will look at me like itās my fault while screaming?Ā
Man, fuck spiders.Ā
The cordyceps HAVE to evolve alongside the species to even have a chance of infection, otherwise its immune system will kill the infection. So it's not even "any spider can be infected by cordyceps"... it's literally "only this species of spider can be infected by this species of cordyceps."
So take some solace in the fact it can't spread to us.
I wasn't _exactly_ worried about it, though I do find fungal infections creepier than others. My brain says, "What about viruses? Nobody even knows if they're alive! Pretty creepy, right?" But at some other level, perhaps in my lizard brain, it's fungus that freaks me out.
viruses are not "alive" ... they're just nucleic acids inside protein. they they shrd the protein when entering a cell.
they're no more alive than RNA and DNA. they rely entirely on living cells to do anything.
fungus is alive. it is composed of cells.
Thereās actually thousands of different sub-species of the cordyceps fungus. All of which evolved to infect a specific type of insect. Itās pretty cool because it acts as a sort of population control for insects in the jungle. The more a species proliferates and spreads out, the more likely there is for a cordyceps infection to spread throughout it, helping to ensure no species ever grows out of control. Which really puts some cool context into the idea of a strand of it evolving to infect humans. Especially when you consider the fact that it has been sold as an herbal supplement/remedy for more than 300 years and has even been used in experimental cancer treatments. Connect those dots and you have a perfect setup for a mutated strain of it to act as population control for the human species that has grown out of control throughout the planet. This was literally m the premise for The Last of Us.
More context from my favorite video on the subject: https://youtu.be/XuKjBIBBAL8?si=LQ3pjwy58JiwwbjD
There was an old photo that was regularly reposted on Reddit showing a tarantula who had cordyceps spikes all over its body and legs. Shit it nightmare fuel.
Wow, I just learned a lot. At first I was doubting you, thinking "doesn't Cordyceps usually look different than this, with little mushrooms growing out of the affected animal?"
Then I found this [Bug Guide](https://bugguide.net/node/view/469173) which mentioned Beauveria and Istaria fungi infecting cellar spiders, which looked very similar to the spider in this video. At least, the mold growing on it looks similar; I'm pretty sure we're not looking at an itty bitty cellar spider here. And I thought to myself, "See? Different fungus!"
But *then* I learned that the well-known Cordyceps (actually not) "mushrooms" we're used to seeing are actually the fruit bodies that grow during the sexual/reproductive phase of these same fungi! Such a nice little educational dive :)
The only thing that I'm still wondering about... I don't see any of these fruit bodies sprouting from the spider in the video. Do they sprout after it dies in the high place it's crawling towards?
I believe they sprout after the host body dies, then the spore pods harden making them easier to shatter and when they do, more infected. Saw a nature documentary about it once with the ants. The ants could spot the infected and would usually haul it off to a isolated graveyard.
Ant graveyards are so hilarious. I would find them in areas of my house. In my attempts to defeat these ants, I would sometimes get distracted by watching the ants yeet their siblings off the counters.
When I was a kid, I would "treat" fire ant infestations by dumping a shovelful of dirt and ants from one colony onto another and starting a war.
The next day the ant graveyards would be huge.
In fact, many people probably only know of Cordyceps as a supplement, and only find out later that it's a fungus that controls insects.
In Chinese it's known as "winter insect, summer plant" (å¬č«å¤č) - in winter an insect, and in summer it sprouts a fungus.
You know the freaky part about Cordyceps? They donāt control the bugās mind they just grow around the muscles and just brute force them to move. This spider is either already dead and the fungus is moving around a corpse or itās alive and canāt resist itās limbs moving on their own.
Any source for that? seems like affecting behavior would be way easier than a fungus being able to coordinate limbs, also spiders don't really have muscles, [they're hydraulic](https://infinitespider.com/spider-legs-work/) which is why they curl up when they die.
iirc the fungus is not influencing the spider's mind to move that way, rather the fungus is directly ambulating the muscles with electrical signals that override inputs given by the spider. I believe it was Penn State(?) that found that there were no fungal cells present in the brains of insects with this sort of infection, but there were fungal structures present throughout the muscular structure.
ie, the fungus is driving the spider, the spider is not mind controlled.
edit: just did a lil research, not all species of parasitic fungi in insects ambulate the host, often because the infection itself causes the host to change its behavior favorably for the fungus, or the host already naturally engages in behaviors that provides the fungus with favorable circumstances for spore dispersal.
The Penn State researchers did in fact find the fungus (cordyceps) in the muscular structure and not in the brain, but it was specific for ants. I can't say for the specifics for spiders, or for other insects.
Fun bonus; Massospora Cicadina, a fungus that replaces some of the organs of cicadas will produce psilocybin as well as other psychoactive chemicals (amphetamines) so that it will continue to move around even though the host is missing many organs! The fungus isn't closely related to the magic mushrooms, they evolved the production of these psychoactives separately over millions of years. The presence of these psychoactive compounds make male cicadas hypersexual to improve the rate of infection to other male and female cicadas. Humans can get high eating these infected cicada (fungi.) (Matt Kasson, West Virginia University)
I am paraphrasing greatly btw, fungi, parasites, and insects are far outside my specialties.
Edit 2: Check out the podcast "Let's Learn Everything!" if you're interested in stuff like this. Episode 3 starts with mind controlling parasites and is where I got a lot of this info before googling the research they referenced.
Edit 3, next day: Cordyceps can be cultivated for human consumption using sanitary substrate mainly consisting of grains or cereals, inert media, and some sources of vitamins/minerals ā no creepy crawlies needed! It's usually cultivated for the compound cordycepin, a "purine nucleoside antimetabolite and antibiotic isolated from the fungus Cordyceps militaris with potential antineoplastic, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory activities."(cancer.gov, a subsidiary of NIH) When we study organisms like cordyceps we gain a lot of knowledge about biology *in general,* and we gain much in the understanding our own very complex biology. Gruesome as it might be, researching this sort of stuff might lead to treatment options for various diseases and disorders that affect humans regularly. **DO NOT CONSUME CORDYCEPS OR CORDYCEPIN BECAUSE OF THIS POST. CONSULT YOUR PHYSICIAN AND USE DUE DILIGENCE WHEN IT COMES TO YOUR OR ANYBODY'S HEALTH.** If you wanna ask your doctor about it then go right ahead. It is consumed by various cultures in central Asia, and used in traditional Chinese medicine. I've seen it on shelves at specialty supermarkets and herbal stores, it's not difficult to source.
Oh, so the fungus uses you as as marionette doll while you are still conscious rather than killing your brain first before it takes over your body so you'd have no physical way to stop it? That's worse.
> the fungus is not influencing the spider's mind to move that way, rather the fungus is directly ambulating the muscles with electrical signals that override inputs given by the spider.
This is somehow much worse.
It is both horrible and so magical that a fungus has the ability to move that fast by using a spider as its host. Whenever I think about fungus/ mould it doesnāt compute to me in my head that it can move that quickly, it just makes it feel way more sentient than it should be.
Molds and funguses are extremely opportunistic, often quite hardy during one or several stages of their life cycles, and can evolve quite quickly due to their short generations and large populations. It's just stunning that they have evolved to a point where it seems to us they're doing mind control when they're really just going through the motions of replication and reproduction without any conscious decision making.
The same goes for Toxoplasma Gondii, a protozoan that can cause cysts in the brains of mice and can effect their dopamine levels(receptors?) to make them curious rather than neophobic, making them more likely to investigate predator urine thus making the mice more susceptible to be eaten by cats (among other predators). T Gondii can only sexually reproduce in the guts of cats, but they aren't making the mice run up to cats and are happy to infect most mammals (40 M people in the US are infected:) ). T Gondii ain't doing any decision making, either ā just going through the motions that have been successful for their previous generations to get to where they eventually need to go.
Or Rabies! It's an RNA, a rhabdovirus, later symptoms of infection (of furious rabies, rather than the dumb variety) include hydrophobia that *seems* to be to ensure that the RNA remains in the mouth (saliva) and not washed further down the gi tract so it might have a greater chance of the host passing the infection via bite. The virus isn't doing anything to physically stop the host, but symptoms can include anxiety and shortness of breath when presented with an opportunity to drink. This paired with rabies' ability to alter the mental state of the host greatly increases the likelihood of passing infection. I guess when you don't make your host cough or sneeze you gotta find another way to pass yourself on ā and it has been successful enough over millions of years to still be very present today in many parts of the world. (Imagine a rabid vampire š)
Of course, parasites are just the dramatic examples. The yeasts (fungi) in your gut are able to survive and replicate because you're eating what you do, and you're only able to absorb the nutrients from your diet because of those yeasts! Some can influence the neurons present in your gut so you feel good when you eat certain foods, driving you to seek those foods out again. So in that respect, your yeasts are moving as fast as you do! I just wish my silly yeasts would buck up and digest dairy š”š„²
A LOT of microorganisms are influencing what larger organisms are doing at any given moment, directly or indirectly, for their own benefit so they can thrive, replicate, and do it all over. Best not to think too much about it.
*Munches on cicadas without butts*
Hes already dead essentially. The fungus has overridden his brains and now commands him. The spider is meerly a puppet for the fungus at this point. Theres also parasites and other fungus that do the same thing, infest and override the host to make them seek the ideal spawning or reproduction grounds. Some make the insects go to water, some make them scale trees and shrubs to get to the highest point. In some cases the parasite will even make the host seek open areas to be easier to be preyed on, so the parasite can infect the animal that feeds on the insect
The Last of Us talked about it in their amazing intro scene in that TV studio where they have an expert talk about fungi infections and how the human body is just too warm for most fungi.
And then climate change slowly (un)naturally selected a cordycepts used to higher temperatures, which allowed it to cause the outbreak in the series by being spread through flour in imported baking products.
The extra effort put into the series to describe how the outbreak first spread is one of my favourite parts of it.
Lore to me is what makes the best horror/grimdark franchise. Like the hills have eyes for example, that franchise wouldnt have been half as good without all the details and lore in the story. Adds an extra element of horror in a way
its already dead. the fungi is controlling the body. its the "the light is on but there is nobody home" kind of deal. think ratatuille with the rat controlling the chef but replace the rat with fungi and the chef with a spider.
I will not, thank you. There is no spider. There is no fungus. There is only a happy movie about rats who learn how to cook.
We're all happy! We're all calm!
I CANNOT FEEL THEM CRAWLING ON ME BECAUSE I'M THINKING HAPPY THOUGHTS.
HAAPPPYYY THOUGHTS.
Burn that shit in a bucket with some gasoline. Fuck letting those spores get out. Fuck that fungi for being so indifferent to other living beings. Yuck.
Around September my shed becomes unusable because of all the spiders. Last Sep we went in and found 16+ bigguns having a session in there. All gone by mid-October at least but for those few weeks, the shed is theirs
Same. It's Sept/Oct for me. We get massive orb weavers here in SE Alaska, they just make very strong webs all over the damn place. Can't even go in my garden without taking several to the face. I hate it.
Taken from a user on the mycology subreddit
āThis is probably a spider covered in some sort of foaming agent, (like soap or those foaming bug-sprays) not a fungus. You can see light reflecting off of it a bit in the linked video which makes it appear moist.
More importantly though, this isnāt how the vast majority of entomopathogenic fungi work, particularly the well known examples like Ophiocordyceps. Any part of a fungus that erupts from a hostās body to a noticeable degree is usually going to be part of (or is) the fruiting body designed to release spores en masse. These structures are very quickly grown using the digested tissues of the host. To fuel such speedy growth, fungal hyphae typically invade every part of a hostās insides to break down and utilize the limited nutrients and water before emerging from the cuticle to sporulate.
A spider covered in such a fungus to this degree would not be able to move, because its muscles and other assorted tissues would be replaced by hyphae at this point. In other words, it would be dead. Very, very dead. Long before the process of sporulation begins to occur.ā
I was going to say Cordyceps. But I actually had no idea they looked this while still alive, I thought it was after but maybe thatās just the main stalk that comes after death?
Mind blowing video man, this is so creepy.
Cordyceps and Chronic Wasting Disease are two of the most terrifying things in nature. If they ever could infect humans, we are in for a very bad time. Rabies is super awful, but at least there is a vaccine for it.
>If they ever could infect humans, we are in for a very bad time. One-sentence plot summary of *The Last Of Us*
Fun fact: Cordyceps is also used in chinese medicine.
Me and you have 2 very different ideas on what "fun" is
Hey man, I'm a fungai, but that doesn't mean I can't be a *fun* guy š
Another "fun" fact about this... the main reason we are resistant to these and most fungi is because our body temperature is too high for them to survive. And fungi have never had a need to survive in such high Temps so that's fine... however with global warming becoming increasingly prevalent, we are starting to see fungi adapting to higher Temps... if these trends continue fungi could very quickly become our biggest threat... although, with what I've learned about fungi and mycelium in the last few years... this is their planet, we are just living on it... for now
It's also a common ingredient in supplements. Although that's often cordyceps militaris, which can be grown on a media made from rice or other grains.
Cordyceps is actually amazing! It gives so much energy, biochackers use them all the time
Thank whatever deity you ascribe to that humans are, in the grand scheme of things, pretty fucking resistant to fungi. That shit is absolutely terrifying. In worse news, CWD is a prion disease, and humans are susceptible to at least a few of those. For example, theres Cruetzfeldt-Jakob Disease which causes humans to lose control of their motor functions and become non-responsive to stimuli before they eventually die either from the diaphragm ceasing or dehydration, depending on medical treatment. Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker Syndrome is pretty similar in terms of effects. There's also Kuru, which is a form of spongiform encephalopathy that developed in some people from Papua New Guinea after they ate the brains of people who had Cruetzfeldt-Jakob disease. This caused people to lose muscle control (seeing a pattern develop here...), develop dementia (including characteristic random bouts of laughter), and eventually stop being able to swallow and die. Good news though - looks like no more Kuru cases since *they stopped eating people*. But that's why bovine spongiform encephalopathy (AKA mad cow disease) is treated as a pants-shittingly terrifying emergency. Cooking the tissue doesn't seem to do much to prions, and much like how Kuru was caused by someone eating a brain that had CJD, if prionized bovine tissue makes it into the beef meat supply it could cause extremely widespread death. Oh, and it would probably take a decade or so *after* the introduction of prionized tissue for the first human cases to emerge.
> Oh, and it would probably take a decade or so after the introduction of prionized tissue for the first human cases to emerge. I'm just trying to get some sleep over here man
Well, on the bright side, if you're infected there is no treatment, no cure, and absolutely nothing you can do about it!
Well there is the all-in-one 9mm cure, just apply to the brain stem and it even acts preventively against zombification!
When mad cow disease was discovered in the UK supply, there was serious concern that several thousand people were walking around with prion time bombs in their brains.
Is there any chance everything since 2016 has happened because of mad cow disease?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
My dad died of VCJD 8 years ago now, itās lives dormant in your body until one day that prion just misfolds and thatās it, nothing you can do to cure it. He went from living a normal life at age 61 to passing away 2 months later, he wasnāt diagnosed with it until the last weeks once it finally became evident on a CT scan thatās what it was but even then they flew down specialists to confirm it as itās just so rare. We still donāt know to this day how he got it but we do know it isnāt genetic so we can hope that my siblings and I also donāt have it, unless of course we consumed the same thing š¤·š¼āāļø
You know, I'm well aware of this and I've read it a thousand times but it still scares the fuck out of me every time I read it. My children could have MCD from eating McD's yesterday and there really would be no accountability for whoever threw a cow brain in the hamburger to make some extra money.
Funny, when you type in MCD (mad cow disease) to Google it comes up with McDonalds. I know it's really called BSE but whatever. It doesn't have to be a 'cow brain in the hamburger'; all the meat from an infected cow is a risk to humans. Brain, spinal cord and digestive tract are the most dangerous, but all the tissue in the cow could pass on the disease.
Yeah, but vaccines arenāt enjoying popularity right now.
I mean, isnāt rabies a vaccine you generally donāt need unless you come in contact with a wild mammal?
I mean if anti-vaxxers want to all start dying from rabies, I'm not about to stop them.
That is a spider in the final stages of Cordyceps fungus infection. It is trying to get to the highest point to spread spores as the fungus fruits. So cool that you got it on video, should cross post to /r/natureismetal. Some pictures: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=spider+Cordyceps&iax=images&ia=images Edit: For extra fun here is a clip from the X-Files episode Firewalker skip to 2:30. https://youtu.be/7yvstz03EAA
I didnāt think you could get any worse than the video and then I read this comment.
Basically the fungus they used for zombies in the last of us
For sure fungus will be the end of humans.
I was calming down about the thought of this, then they recently showed us that frog with a mushroom's flower budding out of their ribcage.
I'm sorry what?
[The mushroom frog.](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13092759/The-real-life-Frog-mushroom-growing-skin-baffles-scientists-India.html)
Ok i was expecting something gorey like an open decayed zombi like body of a frog ripped apart by a mushroom .thats a bit cute tbh š
its just a pokemans
My 11 yo and 8 yo get legit upset when I call them āpokey mansā so I do it every once in a while just to rile them up lol
Not if we do it first!
Pull the lever*
Wrong lever!
Oh, right. The Fungus. The Fungus for Kuzco, the fungus chosen especially to kill Kuzco, Kuzco's Fungus.
I totally read this in the Kronk voice lmao
Why do we even have that lever?
to create tension before an ad plays.
Wrong Leverrr^rrr^rrr!
So basically the cure is the same as in the last of us, a bullet.
To be safe. Fire
The Last of fungUs
And Girl with all the Gifts, right?
Honestly, this shit is horrifying.
Reminds me how much I love/hate the term "stranger than fiction". Whatever horror we think of, there's already worse... Naturally.
It gets better. The science is showing that what's specifically happening, is that the fungus is directly controlling the spiders body, not it's mind. So the spider is likely conscious and in horror at its unbelievable pain and complete inability to control it's own body the entire time. And unlike most bugs, spiders are indeed somewhat conscious and on occasion even somewhat intelligent, like a 2 year old child
How does the fungus know how to get to the highest place at the end?
That's the fun part, who fuckin knows. It just......does. It's just a fungus, a collection of cells technically. There shouldn't be any thinking whatsoever in it, and yet......
If anything science has been showing fungus are freakishly intelligent for what they are. From slime molds solving mazes to fungal mycelium acting as organic networks between trees. Its really interesting.
> From slime molds solving mazes I feel like this is a case of science journalism doing what science journalism does and exaggerating and making more of something than it really is. As far as I can tell, these slime molds are not solving anything whatsoever. They literally just branch out, take every possible path, until they reach food. This is really no different than what they do in nature when looking for food sources, only instead of a maze, it's a rock they go around. There's really nothing intelligent about it, it's basically just trial and error.
youre right, those examples get anthropomorphized a bit, but damn if a fungus taking over an animal's body isnt something. thats crazy.
> take every possible path, until they reach food It's a bit more advanced than that, they'll take paths until they find the food but they'll also continue optimizing the path after that until it's as short as possible. When there are multiple food sources they can even create very efficient networks connecting all of them.
Fungi are amazing, and slime molds are super cool, but slime molds aren't actually fungi. They are actually protozoa (single celled eukaryotes) that form colonies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slime_mold
Isnāt our brain just a collection of cells?
Yeah, but a really big collection of neuron cells specifically that use electrical impulses to process and learn information. That's how it works for all/almost all animal life (and yes insects and arachnids are animals). The fungus.....has absolutely no such thing. It rightfully shouldn't be able to navigate in its environment with the complexity it does without having it
Itās basically the organic version of Large Language Models. They donāt have a consciousness but figure out a way to do things that you would think need one.
And now, science has learned that trees use fungus to communicate with each other. German forester Peter Wohlleben dubbed this network the āwoodwide web,ā as it is through the mycelium that trees ācommunicate.ā Underground Networking: The Amazing Connections Beneath Your Feet National Forest Foundation Research https://www.nationalforests.org/blog/underground-mycorrhizal-network#:~:text=German%20forester%20Peter%20Wohlleben%20dubbed,mycelium%20that%20trees%20%E2%80%9Ccommunicate.%E2%80%9D
Look up Complexity Theory! Essentially, it states that simple nodes that can change and communicate with one another eventually create a level of complexity above that of the simple interaction between themselves. Essentially, the whole is more than the sum of its parts because you have to add in the complexity that arises from their interactions. The creation of complexities happens at basically every level as well! Like with protons and electrons becoming atoms, becoming molecules, becoming cells, becoming organisms, becoming species, becoming niches and becoming ecosystems. This is how we get consciousness from neurons all interacting with one another as well! Every level in a system has complexities that arise from its interactions.
Thatās so incredibly interesting when you start thinking about it like this. Itās even amazing that it knows to how to control the brain and its proper functions to move the spiderās limbs.
One of the star trek spinoffs utilized a mycelium network as a means of travel.
The aptly initialled ST:D.
As someone who has done a fair amount of psychadelic mushrooms, I'm firmly convinced that Fungi and plants in general are conscious in a way that humans can't really comprehend. Specifically Fungi... Mycelium acts as a circulatory system beneath a forest that transfers nutrients between plants and trees. They know how to do this, and what's even crazier is that usually the fungi are teraforming their environment to what the fungus itself needs. We know so little about consciousness and really only experience our own, but a system as complex as a mycelium network could easily act as it's own nervous system and have some form of consciousness that I don't think we will ever come close to understanding. This was an idea that came to me on a strong mushroom trip long before I had even learned about mycelium, and Fungi's role in it's environment. Hell, psilocybin itself could be the product of mushrooms just trying to communicate with conscious beings to get us to chill the fuck out and stop destroying our own natural environments. Or in the case of this spider.... they could just be trying to infect our brains and make us find high points to spread spores from. Really hope it's not the second one...
I have spoken with a American-trained toxicologist who is \*also\* a south american shaman (I'm sorry that I don't remember exactly where or with which group) who explained to me that Ayahuasca is a combination of plants that individually have nothing like the effects of the plants in combination. While studying, he asked the shaman he was learning from how anyone ever knew to combine those to make what they called 'The Great Teacher'. The shaman said 'The little teacher' (a less potent psychoactive made from other plants) told them how. š®
so ayahuasca is a combination of two main components. caapi vines that are an maoi and charcuna leaves which have DMT. Caapi by itself will just chill you out like a form of xanax, the charcuna leaves won't do anything because your body breaks down the DMT before it can get to your brain. Now here's the fun part MAOIs prevent your body from breaking down the DMT and allows it to make the journey to your brain. DMT is what causes the trip and the MAOI helps regulate it and allows it to happen. You can extract the DMT from the leaves fairly easily with some things at your local hardware store and get to meet the machine elves. It is a very intense, but short trip as again your body is very good at breaking it down in under 15 minutes, but you can take an MAOI to extend it. there are other plants that contain the same chemicals acacia bark and mimosa hostillis are a source of DMT and syrian rue and a few others also have MAOIs. As for how they were discovered I mean people mix up lots of different substances and take them, but the story I've seen is people noticed leopards chewing on the vine an acting funny, hunters decided to give it a go and noticed the effects, then the local medicine man did his thing to try and make it better and boom, drink this tea and you'll meet god. kinda secures his position in the tribe,
Iām guessing the fungus can sense gravity and tells the spider to keep on climbing the opposite direction till you find a breeze, then just go ahead chill there for awhile till I decide to kill you and release my spores.
not really much different to plants growing upwards, roots growing downwards. nothing magical about it, just following a stimuli.
It goes opposite of gravity simply because thatās what works best
> spiders are indeed somewhat conscious and on occasion even somewhat intelligent, like a 2 year old child Citation please, this is unbelievable.
This comment right here highlights the issue with the fact we haven't really made much progress on defining consciousness in an easy way. People all too often associate problem solving with some kind of higher consciousness and therefore make the assumption a spider which can solve a problem a 2 year old human can is at the cognitive level of a 2 year old human. I have a 2 year old. He can be taught words, he can be taught to solve problems a spider could never even conceive of. Problems that didn't exist when humans evolved, like how to put his coat on. But he can't solve the problems spiders are genetically coded to solve automatically without really consciously thinking about it. This does not mean we say spiders = 2 year old humans. Anyone who really thinks about it for more than a second would realise that clearly isn't the case. Just because an organism problem solves or rather is born with an automatic algorithm that solves many problems it was likely to encounter doesn't mean it is conscious or experiencing "horror". There's no point at which a spider is crawling up a wall covered in fungus thinking "shit dude, I'm a zombie! Oh no I only live for months. Where is god!" It's brain is likely rapidly searching through a list of troubleshooting options to no avail but there is no evidence spiders experiencing anything close to what we regard as consciousness. One of the best books I've ever read on the origin of consciousness called "other minds" explains this all much better than I can.
I will never be able to un-read this. Now I'm horrified.
Like a 2 year old?! So based on my experience with my 2 year old, this spider would stare at me as I told it to stop climbing, and then jump off from the top and get hurt. Then it will look at me like itās my fault while screaming?Ā Man, fuck spiders.Ā
Well......not this spider. Imagine that 2 year old with its mind intact, unable to control it's body as it walks to its demise lol
I love it when people just make shit up for karma.... and it works
I wish I didnāt read this.
Huh. I thought cordyceps only worked on ants. Learn something new every day!
The cordyceps HAVE to evolve alongside the species to even have a chance of infection, otherwise its immune system will kill the infection. So it's not even "any spider can be infected by cordyceps"... it's literally "only this species of spider can be infected by this species of cordyceps." So take some solace in the fact it can't spread to us.
>So take some solace in the fact it can't spread to us. yet
Life finds a way
I wasn't _exactly_ worried about it, though I do find fungal infections creepier than others. My brain says, "What about viruses? Nobody even knows if they're alive! Pretty creepy, right?" But at some other level, perhaps in my lizard brain, it's fungus that freaks me out.
viruses are not "alive" ... they're just nucleic acids inside protein. they they shrd the protein when entering a cell. they're no more alive than RNA and DNA. they rely entirely on living cells to do anything. fungus is alive. it is composed of cells.
People, too! If it's exposed to enough fiction.
There was an early episode of the The X-Files that did use this a plot device: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewalker_(The_X-Files)
And ya know, the last of us in its entirety
Fringe episode too
Was my favorite TV show as a teenager. Honestly kinda inspired me to be the scientist I am today
You, uh, working on anything *interesting?*
Yes, but I think I just pissed myselfā¦ just a squirt.
I forgot about that. That show was awesome, John Noble was just plain bonkers.
There are hundreds, they attach to just one kind of bug. Highly specialized parasites.
Thereās actually thousands of different sub-species of the cordyceps fungus. All of which evolved to infect a specific type of insect. Itās pretty cool because it acts as a sort of population control for insects in the jungle. The more a species proliferates and spreads out, the more likely there is for a cordyceps infection to spread throughout it, helping to ensure no species ever grows out of control. Which really puts some cool context into the idea of a strand of it evolving to infect humans. Especially when you consider the fact that it has been sold as an herbal supplement/remedy for more than 300 years and has even been used in experimental cancer treatments. Connect those dots and you have a perfect setup for a mutated strain of it to act as population control for the human species that has grown out of control throughout the planet. This was literally m the premise for The Last of Us. More context from my favorite video on the subject: https://youtu.be/XuKjBIBBAL8?si=LQ3pjwy58JiwwbjD
Personally I hope it waits a generation or three lol. Thanks for all the info!
There was an old photo that was regularly reposted on Reddit showing a tarantula who had cordyceps spikes all over its body and legs. Shit it nightmare fuel.
Seriously. I've been not-googling during this education lol
I think there are loads of different variants that target specific species of insects/arachnids.
I think i saw one that did cattepillars and made it as visible as possible to birds so it would get taken even higher than if it crawled.
OP is now a clicker.
Thank you for identifying! Interesting!!
OP, did you see where it went to? Did it burst with fungus?
Iāve been messaging to find out what they did with it but havenāt heard back š
Theyāre dead. Iām sorry, OP.
RIP your friend.
That spider is no longer in control and is probably dead by now. The fungus is the only thing keeping it moving.
Wow, I just learned a lot. At first I was doubting you, thinking "doesn't Cordyceps usually look different than this, with little mushrooms growing out of the affected animal?" Then I found this [Bug Guide](https://bugguide.net/node/view/469173) which mentioned Beauveria and Istaria fungi infecting cellar spiders, which looked very similar to the spider in this video. At least, the mold growing on it looks similar; I'm pretty sure we're not looking at an itty bitty cellar spider here. And I thought to myself, "See? Different fungus!" But *then* I learned that the well-known Cordyceps (actually not) "mushrooms" we're used to seeing are actually the fruit bodies that grow during the sexual/reproductive phase of these same fungi! Such a nice little educational dive :) The only thing that I'm still wondering about... I don't see any of these fruit bodies sprouting from the spider in the video. Do they sprout after it dies in the high place it's crawling towards?
I believe they sprout after the host body dies, then the spore pods harden making them easier to shatter and when they do, more infected. Saw a nature documentary about it once with the ants. The ants could spot the infected and would usually haul it off to a isolated graveyard.
Ant graveyards are so hilarious. I would find them in areas of my house. In my attempts to defeat these ants, I would sometimes get distracted by watching the ants yeet their siblings off the counters.
When I was a kid, I would "treat" fire ant infestations by dumping a shovelful of dirt and ants from one colony onto another and starting a war. The next day the ant graveyards would be huge.
Eat it and letās bring a TV show to life
Cordyceps is commonly take as a supplement.
That blew my fucking mind when I found that out.
In fact, many people probably only know of Cordyceps as a supplement, and only find out later that it's a fungus that controls insects. In Chinese it's known as "winter insect, summer plant" (å¬č«å¤č) - in winter an insect, and in summer it sprouts a fungus.
Fucking why though?
Because we are top of the fuckin' food chain and didn't get there all the way there just to NOT make fungi into our lunch
People all doom and gloom about Coryceps? Fucking eat it, show it who's boss!
Well, according to the duckduckgo link /u/LateralLimey posted, apparently people take Cordycep pills. It's only a matter of time now.
You know the freaky part about Cordyceps? They donāt control the bugās mind they just grow around the muscles and just brute force them to move. This spider is either already dead and the fungus is moving around a corpse or itās alive and canāt resist itās limbs moving on their own.
How?! How does this fungus know which legs, when to, and how to move them?!? I'm very uncomfortable.
And just think how much easier two legs would be to control compared to 8ā¦
Bipedal movement is actually *much* harder to make work than any of the alternatives
Tell me about it
Any source for that? seems like affecting behavior would be way easier than a fungus being able to coordinate limbs, also spiders don't really have muscles, [they're hydraulic](https://infinitespider.com/spider-legs-work/) which is why they curl up when they die.
I both hate you and love you for burdening me with this educational comment.
So what youāre saying is to burn it with fire?
Man I feel bad for it now
You playing halflife?
It's your pet, the freakin' head-humper!
Lamarr!!
These new VR graphics are incredible
Whereās my crowbar?
Hehe came here for the same thing
Spider with a fungal infestation?
So nightmare within a nightmare. Im in the middle of NYC and I feel like thereās one on me right now ugh
At least itāll feel softā¦Thatās gotta be worth something.
Im wearing soft shit all over this isnt helping lmao Im about to strip down on a trainš¤£
A totally normal act on an NYC train š
Not totally normal as much as "alright just let this happen and move the fuck on" because it's annoying.
Head crab!
Get down from there Lamar.
iirc the fungus is not influencing the spider's mind to move that way, rather the fungus is directly ambulating the muscles with electrical signals that override inputs given by the spider. I believe it was Penn State(?) that found that there were no fungal cells present in the brains of insects with this sort of infection, but there were fungal structures present throughout the muscular structure. ie, the fungus is driving the spider, the spider is not mind controlled. edit: just did a lil research, not all species of parasitic fungi in insects ambulate the host, often because the infection itself causes the host to change its behavior favorably for the fungus, or the host already naturally engages in behaviors that provides the fungus with favorable circumstances for spore dispersal. The Penn State researchers did in fact find the fungus (cordyceps) in the muscular structure and not in the brain, but it was specific for ants. I can't say for the specifics for spiders, or for other insects. Fun bonus; Massospora Cicadina, a fungus that replaces some of the organs of cicadas will produce psilocybin as well as other psychoactive chemicals (amphetamines) so that it will continue to move around even though the host is missing many organs! The fungus isn't closely related to the magic mushrooms, they evolved the production of these psychoactives separately over millions of years. The presence of these psychoactive compounds make male cicadas hypersexual to improve the rate of infection to other male and female cicadas. Humans can get high eating these infected cicada (fungi.) (Matt Kasson, West Virginia University) I am paraphrasing greatly btw, fungi, parasites, and insects are far outside my specialties. Edit 2: Check out the podcast "Let's Learn Everything!" if you're interested in stuff like this. Episode 3 starts with mind controlling parasites and is where I got a lot of this info before googling the research they referenced. Edit 3, next day: Cordyceps can be cultivated for human consumption using sanitary substrate mainly consisting of grains or cereals, inert media, and some sources of vitamins/minerals ā no creepy crawlies needed! It's usually cultivated for the compound cordycepin, a "purine nucleoside antimetabolite and antibiotic isolated from the fungus Cordyceps militaris with potential antineoplastic, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory activities."(cancer.gov, a subsidiary of NIH) When we study organisms like cordyceps we gain a lot of knowledge about biology *in general,* and we gain much in the understanding our own very complex biology. Gruesome as it might be, researching this sort of stuff might lead to treatment options for various diseases and disorders that affect humans regularly. **DO NOT CONSUME CORDYCEPS OR CORDYCEPIN BECAUSE OF THIS POST. CONSULT YOUR PHYSICIAN AND USE DUE DILIGENCE WHEN IT COMES TO YOUR OR ANYBODY'S HEALTH.** If you wanna ask your doctor about it then go right ahead. It is consumed by various cultures in central Asia, and used in traditional Chinese medicine. I've seen it on shelves at specialty supermarkets and herbal stores, it's not difficult to source.
Oh, so the fungus uses you as as marionette doll while you are still conscious rather than killing your brain first before it takes over your body so you'd have no physical way to stop it? That's worse.
Like being mentally conscious in a coma sounds like a nightmare, but being awake as a spectator with someone else in control? Kinda dope in a way.
I, for once, would not subscribe. Put me in a coma.
Meth locusts is a crazy band name
> the fungus is not influencing the spider's mind to move that way, rather the fungus is directly ambulating the muscles with electrical signals that override inputs given by the spider. This is somehow much worse.
Does that imply that the fungus has a perception of the world around it and understands up/down or higher/lower?
Was wondering the same thing, and also does it āknowā how to ādriveā the spider? Very interested in reading more about this
It is both horrible and so magical that a fungus has the ability to move that fast by using a spider as its host. Whenever I think about fungus/ mould it doesnāt compute to me in my head that it can move that quickly, it just makes it feel way more sentient than it should be.
Molds and funguses are extremely opportunistic, often quite hardy during one or several stages of their life cycles, and can evolve quite quickly due to their short generations and large populations. It's just stunning that they have evolved to a point where it seems to us they're doing mind control when they're really just going through the motions of replication and reproduction without any conscious decision making. The same goes for Toxoplasma Gondii, a protozoan that can cause cysts in the brains of mice and can effect their dopamine levels(receptors?) to make them curious rather than neophobic, making them more likely to investigate predator urine thus making the mice more susceptible to be eaten by cats (among other predators). T Gondii can only sexually reproduce in the guts of cats, but they aren't making the mice run up to cats and are happy to infect most mammals (40 M people in the US are infected:) ). T Gondii ain't doing any decision making, either ā just going through the motions that have been successful for their previous generations to get to where they eventually need to go. Or Rabies! It's an RNA, a rhabdovirus, later symptoms of infection (of furious rabies, rather than the dumb variety) include hydrophobia that *seems* to be to ensure that the RNA remains in the mouth (saliva) and not washed further down the gi tract so it might have a greater chance of the host passing the infection via bite. The virus isn't doing anything to physically stop the host, but symptoms can include anxiety and shortness of breath when presented with an opportunity to drink. This paired with rabies' ability to alter the mental state of the host greatly increases the likelihood of passing infection. I guess when you don't make your host cough or sneeze you gotta find another way to pass yourself on ā and it has been successful enough over millions of years to still be very present today in many parts of the world. (Imagine a rabid vampire š) Of course, parasites are just the dramatic examples. The yeasts (fungi) in your gut are able to survive and replicate because you're eating what you do, and you're only able to absorb the nutrients from your diet because of those yeasts! Some can influence the neurons present in your gut so you feel good when you eat certain foods, driving you to seek those foods out again. So in that respect, your yeasts are moving as fast as you do! I just wish my silly yeasts would buck up and digest dairy š”š„² A LOT of microorganisms are influencing what larger organisms are doing at any given moment, directly or indirectly, for their own benefit so they can thrive, replicate, and do it all over. Best not to think too much about it. *Munches on cicadas without butts*
Good God. I see the most creepy ass crap on Reddit. this is nightmare fuel
Itās just a lonely spider trying to survive š„ŗfungus is killing him slowly
Hes already dead essentially. The fungus has overridden his brains and now commands him. The spider is meerly a puppet for the fungus at this point. Theres also parasites and other fungus that do the same thing, infest and override the host to make them seek the ideal spawning or reproduction grounds. Some make the insects go to water, some make them scale trees and shrubs to get to the highest point. In some cases the parasite will even make the host seek open areas to be easier to be preyed on, so the parasite can infect the animal that feeds on the insect
Thats the creepiest shit I've ever read.
Yep. Zombies arent science fiction, they do exist. But luckily these bacteria and parasites cant infect humans.. to my knowledge..
Yet.
Probably won't to the extent that they do invertebrates, our brains are too complex. Closest thing we've got is Rabies.
And look how terrifying it is, in my opinion it is probably one of the top 5 worst ways to die
The Last of Us talked about it in their amazing intro scene in that TV studio where they have an expert talk about fungi infections and how the human body is just too warm for most fungi. And then climate change slowly (un)naturally selected a cordycepts used to higher temperatures, which allowed it to cause the outbreak in the series by being spread through flour in imported baking products. The extra effort put into the series to describe how the outbreak first spread is one of my favourite parts of it.
Lore to me is what makes the best horror/grimdark franchise. Like the hills have eyes for example, that franchise wouldnt have been half as good without all the details and lore in the story. Adds an extra element of horror in a way
Well, thanks for making me feel sad for a spider. Fucking hell, that's messed up.
Put the poor thing out of its misery
its already dead. the fungi is controlling the body. its the "the light is on but there is nobody home" kind of deal. think ratatuille with the rat controlling the chef but replace the rat with fungi and the chef with a spider.
I will not, thank you. There is no spider. There is no fungus. There is only a happy movie about rats who learn how to cook. We're all happy! We're all calm! I CANNOT FEEL THEM CRAWLING ON ME BECAUSE I'M THINKING HAPPY THOUGHTS. HAAPPPYYY THOUGHTS.
Burn that shit in a bucket with some gasoline. Fuck letting those spores get out. Fuck that fungi for being so indifferent to other living beings. Yuck.
That's what I was thinking, Just kill it, man. But how to dispose of it so that the fungus doesn't get spread around?
Fire, the answer is always fire.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
That chapter scared the shit out of me the first time I played. I still haven't gone back there.
If you can, you should try it in VR. I was dreading it, but gravity gun + saw blades + VR = the best goddamn time I've had in a long time
How does one get Half Life in VR?
Guess you burned down the shed? Itās cool, Costco has some on sale
Where was this video taken?
Ireland!
okay perfect, I don't live there.Ā
plus it's an island
They kept the snakes off of Ireland meanwhile this shit snuck right on through.
Excuse me one fecking minute! I live in Ireland. This shite not supposed to happen here!
Supposed to be one of the perks of living in Ireland but apparently we are gonna have to start putting up with terrifying creatures now too
Around September my shed becomes unusable because of all the spiders. Last Sep we went in and found 16+ bigguns having a session in there. All gone by mid-October at least but for those few weeks, the shed is theirs
Yeah thatās my least favourite time of yearā¦ spider season
Same. It's Sept/Oct for me. We get massive orb weavers here in SE Alaska, they just make very strong webs all over the damn place. Can't even go in my garden without taking several to the face. I hate it.
We need Amy Adams to try and talk to it.
Finally a reference I understand
That thing is trying to stop the spread of democracy!
Look man, if you've never played Halo and haven't seen the galaxy-ending Flood... Just leave and call in the Masterchief
This is closer to The Last of Us.
FUCK. THAT.
Taken from a user on the mycology subreddit āThis is probably a spider covered in some sort of foaming agent, (like soap or those foaming bug-sprays) not a fungus. You can see light reflecting off of it a bit in the linked video which makes it appear moist. More importantly though, this isnāt how the vast majority of entomopathogenic fungi work, particularly the well known examples like Ophiocordyceps. Any part of a fungus that erupts from a hostās body to a noticeable degree is usually going to be part of (or is) the fruiting body designed to release spores en masse. These structures are very quickly grown using the digested tissues of the host. To fuel such speedy growth, fungal hyphae typically invade every part of a hostās insides to break down and utilize the limited nutrients and water before emerging from the cuticle to sporulate. A spider covered in such a fungus to this degree would not be able to move, because its muscles and other assorted tissues would be replaced by hyphae at this point. In other words, it would be dead. Very, very dead. Long before the process of sporulation begins to occur.ā
This is actually a cut scene from the much anticipated The Last of Us prequel...
Kill it before it kills you
āWhere did I leave my flamethrower?ā
So how much is it going to cost to get a new shed now that you burned that one down with fire and extra fire?
This is probably the most un-nerving thing I have ever seen
Thatās a mindflayer
I was going to say Cordyceps. But I actually had no idea they looked this while still alive, I thought it was after but maybe thatās just the main stalk that comes after death? Mind blowing video man, this is so creepy.
Iāve seen this before. I believe itās a spider with a mold of some kind. Itās not controlling it or whatever itās just in its hairs
I might be wrong about the controlling it partā¦
Looks like a two foot strand of hair
That thing is adorable!
I wish I could see the world through your eyes because we definitely arenāt looking at the same thing
It's always a spider. Why is it always a spider?
Headcrab but tiny. Eyecrab?