The Associated Press
With their bulging red eyes and their alien-like mating sound, periodical cicadas can seem scary and weird enough. But some of them really are sex-crazed zombies on speed, hijacked by a super-sized fungus. West Virginia University mycology professor Matt Kasson, his 9-year-old son Oliver, and graduate student Angie Macias are tracking the nasty fungus, called Massospora cicadina. It is the only one on Earth that makes amphetamine — the drug called speed — in a critter when it takes over.
Ten seconds later at a neighboring bush, Oliver finds another. And just a bit after that a photographer finds a third. Kasson and his small team collected 36 infected cicadas in his brief Chicago area jaunt with people sending him another 200 or so from all over. He’s still waiting for an RNA analysis of the fungus. Some cicada experts have estimated maybe one in 1,000 of the periodical cicadas are infected with this fungus, but it’s not much more than a guess. Mount St.
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Collecting sex-crazed zombie cicadas on speed: Scientists track a bug-controlling super-sized fungusWith their bulging red eyes and their alien-like mating sound, periodical cicadas can seem scary and weird enough. But some of them really are sex-crazed zombies on speed, hijacked by a super-sized fungus.
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Collecting sex-crazed zombie cicadas on speed: Scientists track a bug-controlling super-sized fungusWith their bulging red eyes and their alien-like mating sound, periodical cicadas can seem scary and weird enough.
Lire la suite »
Collecting sex-crazed zombie cicadas on speed: Scientists track a bug-controlling super-sized fungusWith their bulging red eyes and their alien-like mating sound, periodical cicadas can seem scary and weird enough.
Lire la suite »
Collecting sex-crazed zombie cicadas on speed: Scientists track a bug-controlling super-sized fungusWith their bulging red eyes and their alien-like mating sound, periodical cicadas can seem scary and weird enough.
Lire la suite »
Collecting sex-crazed zombie cicadas on speed: Scientists track a bug-controlling super-sized fungusWith their bulging red eyes and their alien-like mating sound, periodical cicadas can seem scary and weird enough. But some of them really are sex-crazed zombies on speed, hijacked by a super-sized fungus.
Lire la suite »
Collecting sex-crazed zombie cicadas on speed: Scientists track a bug-controlling super-sized fungusA unique fungus infects periodical cicadas, producing amphetamines and causing hypersexual behavior to spread its spores, which researchers are studying to understand its impact and peculiar characteristics.
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