Return of the Cicadas, Zombie Bugs
The Return of the Cicadas
Guest: Chris Simon, Professor, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut
This year, a brood of millions of cicadas will emerge from their underground nests in North Carolina, West Virginia and Virginia for the first time since 2003. Scientists need your help tracking them! And you might discover something unusual about some of these cicadas. Fungi can take over their bodies, turning them into zombies. They've got a survival strategy, though!
The Creepy Crawly Reality of Parasites That Turn Their Hosts into Zombies
Guest: Matt Simon, WIRED science journalist and author, "Plight of the Living Dead: What Real-Life Zombies Reveal About Our World—And Ourselves"
In what seems to be taken straight out of a horror movie, some parasites can actually zombify insects.