Zombie-ant fungus

It begins to by attaching to the ant's exoskeleton, and once it penetrates, it colonizes the flesh of the ant.

This is called the parasitic phase, as it acts as a parasite toward the ant.

It then begins with the weird things.

It will hijack the behavior of the plant and one day around solar noon will cause the ant to crawl up a plant about 25 centimeters up onto the underside of a leaf and bite down on the vein through the center of the underside.

The producer creates the framework for the presenter to fill with ideas and the producer gets to do the final edit but the presenter gets to create a world.

Cordyceps or zombie ant fungus is this fungus discovered by the British naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace in 1859.

When I first came across it a few years ago I was immediately transfixed and read everything I could find about it for weeks until I needed to do something to tell the world about it.

I had an idea for a play in which the cordyceps could come alive and be embodied in human form.

It features actors and dancers and musicians and of course scientists.

I'm very curious to see how the artists play with the zombie ant fungus story and the musicians and what they can bring to life from this amazing phenomenon.

and also from the scientists how we can extract some facts that really make the artists sing.

My name is Merlin Sheldrake and I'm a biologist and a writer.