THE ZOMBIE ANT EXPERIENCE
INSTRUCTIONS
THESE INSTRUCTIONS PERTAIN TO THE REMOTE VERSION OF THE ZOMBIE ANT EXPERIENCE.
IF YOU ARE STANDING IN FRONT OF THE INSTALLATION, PLEASE CLICK THE "START THE EXPERIENCE" BUTTON.
1. Print this document with the following settings:
11”x8.5” paper
Full color
Single-sided
One page per sheet
Landscape mode
2. Affix pages 2 - 6 to wall. Download Learning Objective Images
3. Download and install the “Zombie Ants” app on your
phone or tablet.
4. Launch the app and follow the on-screen prompts.
Enjoy!
LEARNING OBJECTIVE 1:
ANT COLONY
Welcome to the Zombie Ant Experience.
The ant nest is a society, in many ways like our own.
Ants have invented agriculture, antibiotics, war, slavery,
and even air conditioning. An ant's society can be
anywhere from 100 ants to 15 million, and they're all one
family. The worker ants are all female, all sister, and all
the daughters of a single queen. It is these workers that
emerge each night from the nest to travel along trails
that snake out into the forest, so that they can find
food. The carpenter ants, that are the preferred host of
the zombie-ant fungi, depend heavily on sugar for food.
The healthy ants get this sugar by milking the bodies of
living insects feeding high up in the canopy. To get to the
sugar source, the red legged Brazilian carpenter ant
moves rapidly along the trails of fallen branches. These
trails can be used by the same colony for months on
end. The first ants lay down chemical trails for the others
to follow, which ensures that none get lost along the way.
It is in this way that the colony grows and thrives, but, it
must also reckon with the zombie-ant fungi.
LEARNING OBJECTIVE 2:
INFECTION PHASE 1
For a species of zombie ant fungus that is specialized to
attack and kill the red-legged Brazilian carpenter ant, the
trails are key. It is on the trails that each night,
thousands of ants run. And so, it is on these trails the
fungus lays its spores at dawn. Hundreds of dead ants
hang from the leaves of plants that surround the colony.
Each evening, the unaffected ants emerge into the forest
to run through a sniper's alley made up of their dead
sisters clamped to leaves.
LEARNING OBJECTIVE 3:
INFECTION PHASE 2
The infected spore attaches like Velcro to the body of
the ant whose unaware that her life will soon be over. The
first step for the fungus is getting through the thick
armor of the ant which it does by using a combination of
corrosive chemicals and mechanical pressure to push
through the defenses. Once inside, the spore multiplies
and multiplies and multiplies until it builds up the force
that's needed for next stage, which is manipulation of
the ant host. To manipulate the ant so that it acts like a
puppet on a string, the fungus needs to take control.
This means controlling the muscles that move the ant. It
first slowly separates the densely packed muscle fibers
so it can squeeze in between them, then, and quite
remarkably, the fungal cells join together and cooperate.
What were previously individual cells now connect to form
a three dimensional structure of fungal cells surrounding
the muscles.
LEARNING OBJECTIVE 4:
LEAF BITE
On the evening that it will die, the infected ant really isn't
much of ant anymore. Its body is filled up with fungal
cells, and as much as 40% of the creature we look at is
fungus. What happens next shows that 100% of its
behavior is that of the fungus. It needs its ant host to
climb up a plant that is near the trail. On this plant it
finds a leaf and bites deeply into the tissue. The biting is
important because the next stage is death, as the fungus
release chemicals that kill the ant. Since the ant is upside
down, the death grip the fungus induces, ensures the ant
cadaver doesn't fall down to the forest floor. And now
this once important member of the colony lies dead
above the trails her sisters are still walking on. Over the
following days, the fungus rapidly converts all the muscle
and tissue of the ant into fungal material that grows
explosively from the ants body. Some of this growth are
the long strands that stitch the ant's body to the leaf as
it will stay in place for as long as a year and a half. But
most of the growth is to form the stalk that emerges
from the ant's head. It is on this stalk that we find the
spore factory, the ascoma.
LEARNING OBJECTIVE 5:
ASCOMA
The ascoma is the most important part of the fungus. It
takes weeks to grow. And when complete, it has over 100
little sacs in which spores mature. The end of each sac
is a whole called an ostiole, through which spores emerge.
Since fungal spores are microscopic, they face distinct
aerodynamic challenges and the fungus must rapidly
shoot them out to break through a thin layer of air called
a 'boundary layer'. Without gunpowder, this is a challenge,
as you might imagine. The fungus uses the sac-like
structure the spores are in, together with the changing
humidity that naturally occurs in the forest, to create
localized high and low pressure environments. As the
pressure changes, the spores are shot out to break
through the boundary layer, and once in flight are
propelled by the wind. Although the forest's understory is
still and humid, there is enough wind to carry the spores.
Since the target are the foraging trails, the spores must
hit them. Many don't make it, and fall uselessly to the
ground, or hit branches the ants are not walking on. But
by manipulating the ants to bite the leaves near the
trails, the fungus has ensured that enough spores hit the
nearby trails and the cycle continues. The circle of life,
or in this case, the circle of death, goes on.
