Zombies can it really happen

Most are unable to sleep during the night and find it almost impossible to stay up during the day eventually reducing them to a zombie-like state before going into a coma and dying. Those that survive are generally left with irreparable brain damage. The rabies virus causes massive inflammation of the brain and is transmitted by bites from infected animals.

Symptoms of rabies can include full or partial paralysis, mental impairment, agitation, strange behaviour which I would like to be better defined as many people accuse me of acting strange I suppose if a person who had a tendency toward aggressive behavior got rabies, it would be possible! Dysarthria — is a disorder affecting the motor controls of human speech.

There are a number of causes of dysarthria, but all are characterized by a malfunction in the nervous system that makes it difficult to control the tongue, lips, throat or lungs which then leads to difficulty in articulating and can cause the inability to communicate more than unintelligible noises — quite like the moans and groans of zombies. Leprosy — is caused by a bacterium, Mycobacterium leprae. Cases of leprosy have been reported going back more than years, and considering a common feature of zombies is their rotting flesh and decaying body parts, it would seem that leprosy and its similar sounding symptoms would be a natural inspiration for such stories!

It is a myth that leprosy causes body parts to fall off, but it can cause damage and numbness which could cause slow, shuffling walk similar to the gait we associate with zombies.

If you can only come up with a zombie apocalypse and hot dog shortage as possibilities, think harder. Unless you live on Sesame Street with Mr. Snuffleupagus, every location has its set of possible major disasters. And climate change may mean that new kinds of disasters can come to your area soon. As they say when you are running away from zombies, when you are in a group, you only have to run faster than the slowest person in the group.

A third suggestion is identifying your emergency contacts. This list should include more than just Justin Bieber. Sure meeting the Biebs may be on your bucket list, but the police, the fire department, your doctor, and maybe a zombie hunter like Milla Jovovich would serve you better during an emergency.

Milla Jovovich has starred as Alice the zombie slayer, in the Resident Evil movie series. A fourth recommendation from the CDC is plan your evacuation route. Know where to go to get out of town quickly during an emergency. Memorize this route. This is a BETA experience.

This is likely due to the fact that trees and plants in this state lose their leaves in the winter. There, her team infected a few species of ant with the South Carolina fungus. The parasite could kill all of the different ants she introduced to it.

But the fungus made plant-climbing zombies only out of the species that it naturally infects in the wild. The researchers kept the ant brains alive in small Petri dishes. When the fungus was exposed to its favorite brains that is, ones from the ants that it naturally infects in the wild , it released thousands of chemicals.

Many of these chemicals were completely new to science. The fungus also released chemicals when exposed to unfamiliar brains. These chemicals, however, were completely different. The researchers published their results in And the researchers only succeeded after setting up artificial hour cycles of light and darkness for the zombies and their parasites. There, she is now probing how that daily cycle of sunlight and darkness affects zombification. Of all parasites, wasps know some of the creepiest tricks.

One wasp, Reclinervellus nielseni , lays its eggs only on orb-weaving spiders. The spider stays alive long enough to spin a web. But not just any web.

It spins a nursery of sorts for the wriggly, worm-like wasp baby stuck to its back. The spider will even break down its old web to start a new one for the larva. He studies insect behavior and ecology at Kobe University in Japan. When the web is done, the larva eats its spider host. Now the larva spins a cocoon in the middle of the web.

The extra strong threads most likely help the larva stay safe until it emerges from its cocoon 10 days later. The jewel wasp puts an insect on the menu it serves up to its young: cockroach. But it follows like a dog on a leash when the wasp pulls on its antenna. The wasp leads the cockroach to her nest and lays an egg on it. Then she leaves, sealing the egg inside the nest with its dinner. When the egg hatches, the larva slowly devours its host.

Being a zombie, this cockroach never tries to fight back or escape. This scenario is so creepy that biologists named a similar wasp Ampulex dementor — after a supernatural enemy in the Harry Potter series.

This leaves the victim alive but without a self or soul. Although A. The mother jewel wasp performs something like brain surgery. Once found, she then injects a zombifying venom. This shows that the wasp can sense the right place to inject its poison. This chemical helps the cockroach stay alert, walk and perform other tasks.

When researchers injected a substance similar to octopamine into zombie cockroaches, the insects again began walking.