Imagine something or someone takes control of your body and mind and makes you listen to his or her command! So much so that you go against your natural habits and climb a mountain and stay there and eventually the thing which is controlling takes over you and your body as if you are just a speck of dust!
Sounds like the screenplay of a zombie movie with Will Smith as the hero!? No! The truth is actually stranger than fiction!
This happens in nature and there are so many examples but this example in particular is frightening! There is this fungus which grows in some places which infects ants and what happens is scary!
Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, commonly known as zombie-ant fungus, is an insect-pathogenic fungus, discovered by the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace in 1859.
While foraging and going a little out of its way or a careless ant steps on this fungus which attaches itself to the ant and penetrates the skin and reproduces and waits. Slowly it propagates and reaches the circulation and brain of the ant and then starts the mind control of the scary kind!
O. unilateralis infected ants are characterized by alteration of the behavioral patterns of the infected ant. Infected hosts leave their comfortable grounds and canopy nests and foraging trails for the forest floor, an area with a temperature and humidity suitable for fungal growth!
Not only that, they then use their mandibles to attach themselves to a major vein on the underside of a leaf, where the host remains after its eventual death. The ant literally gives up its mind and body for the fungus which is actually less evolved evolutionary speaking!
The process, leading up to mortality, takes 4–10 days, and includes a reproductive stage where fruiting bodies grow from the ant’s head, rupturing to release the fungus’s spores. The sight of the fungus growing out of the ants head and body is a blue print for a horror movie!
Now of course the ant is lower down in the evolutionary ladder than the homo sapien which is maybe why this does not happen to us! It is always better to have our own control over our body and minds! You can do that with whatever is comfortable to you! Meditate or do yoga! Like the Adiyogi! Believe what you may, all you need to do is to take the positives from everything and everyone!
Instead of being the ant, be the mediant!
Happy Mahashivaratri to one and all!
Shubh ratri…
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