http://www.nature.com/news/fungus-that-controls-zombie-ants-has-own-fungal-stalker-1.11787
Nature's Zombies
This article is about nature's zombies. The zombies I'm talking about aren't what you think because the instant thought of a zombie is a flesh eating dead human. There are parasites called baculoviruses that can control the mind and actions of small insects and spiders. The Anelosimus octavius is a species of spider that is controlled by a parasitic wasp. The parasitic wasp controls the spider through its genes that have proteins that alter the spider's behavior. When the parasitic wasp hijacks the brain of the spider it creates itself an entire new web for the host of the spider and it creates a platform and a cocoon for it to live in when the spider dies off. When the spider dies the parasitic wasp larvae crawls out of the spider and lives within the cocoon so it won't die. These "zombie" organisms are not rare there are a number of types of organisms that can control the host's brain such as viruses, fungi, wasps, tapeworms and a large amount of other parasites. These viruses are not a threat to humans because they only infect small insects such as caterpillars, spiders, gypsy moths, etc. Caterpillars who are infected with this "zombie" virus usually just eat and eat and eat when they are suppose to only eat at night because of predators in the day time. This is because they are stuck in a loop triggered from the zombie parasite. The zombie parasites can infect the small insects through protein genes and neurotransmitters in the brain. There are trillions of trillions of these different baculoviruses and this is not to say that they are going to infect humans and a zombie apocalypse will happen, but if there are natural zombie like parasites that can infect small insects what if they adapt and evolve and need bigger hosts?
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