The forest floor was a highway of pheromones and duty. For Ivy the carpenter ant, life was simple. Follow the scent trail, find food, and return home.
One day a single microscopic spore drifted down from the canopy above, landing on Ivy’s back. She had no idea the enzymes were slowly burning a hole into her body. She didn’t feel the threads of fungus slip into her bloodstream. For three days she worked, unaware she was already a walking corpse.
On the fourth day the twitching started. Ivy tried to pick up a seed but her mandibles refused to close. As she tried to march in line, her legs trembled, breaking the rhythm of the colony.
Then came the chemical signal. Not a thought of her own, but a sudden overwhelming compulsion.
Leave now. The signal screamed. Get to higher ground.
The signals never arrived. The fungus had grown around her muscle fibers, physically severing the connection between brain and body. The mind is useless; it’s the body the fungus wants.
Ivy was a passenger in her own vehicle, watching helplessly through her eyes as a foreign pilot steered her straight to death. Her hijacked legs began to carry her up the stem of a shrub. She stopped exactly 25cm off the ground. Where the humidity and temperature is perfect.
It was solar noon, the sun shining brightly on her back.
The fungus gathered its strength for one final violent command.
Forcing Ivy’s jaws open wider than ever before. With a spasm of force, her head was slammed down into the vein of a leaf.
Snap.
Her jaws forced shut. The fungus released a quick setting glue, fusing Ivy’s jaws to the leaf. She tried to let go, but the muscles atrophied into rigid, deathly lock.
Ivy died shortly after, but the fungus was just beginning.
Over the next week it consumed her insides, leaving the shell as its shield. As the pressure built the back of her head split open. A long slender stalk erupted from her skull, reaching towards the light.
The tip of the stalk formed a pod swelling with new spores. Down below on the forest floor, the colony of carpenter ants is hard at work.
The pod bursts!! The spores drift down invisible and silent, landing on the backs of the unsuspecting worker ants.
Silently striking. Beginning the cycle again.
Hope you enjoyed this short story!!
This is how the fungi Cordyceps essentially stays alive. Getting the ant to the ideal spot where the fungi can flourish and get its spores spread out along the forest floor.