“Zombie cicadas” infected with mind-controlling fungus return to West Virginia
The mind-controlling--probably a better phrase for them is "behavior altering"--class of parasites are fascinating from an academic sense... and nightmare fuel from a day-to-day sense. Two additional cases which I remember studying in school are:(1) A parasitic worm which causes snails to climb to clearly visible positions so that birds can eat them. These snails are usually avoidant of those positions, and so this is clear behavior alteration. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkiL-v4X8w8)(2) A parasitic fungus which takes over ants, causing them to climb up high and then bite (!!! this means it can affect specific muscle movements) into a plant, before bursting from the body and spreading spores (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vijGdWn5-h8, apologies for the mildly dramatic nat-geo video)And for a good piece of sci-fi on the first-person experience of seeing others rapidly/inexplicably change behavior, check out [The Screwfly Solution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screwfly_Solution). (It's a good read intended as commentary on patriarchy, and it also uses a behavior altering piece of biology as a key plot device.)There is a part of me that wonders if there are things (viruses/bacteria/funguses) which effect human behavior. And if in 100/1000s of years into the future we'll look back and realize that some subset of maladaptive personality traits and/or mood disorders aren't something that simply "happen" to someone, but are instead explained by biology/chemistry we didn't have a good understanding of. The same way we now look at ancient Rome and say "yeah, their use of lead pipes definitely had some effect on their psychology".Then again, there is something deeply human to say "nah, we are fully in control of our psychology. These things only happen in simpler animals, and our more-complicated biology means this could NEVER happen to us".