The Puppet Masters - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): Brain Slug

A form of Body Horror common in alien-invasion plots. Aliens, rather than invading in their own form, insert themselves into (usually) unwilling humans, whereupon they completely take over the host's body, suppress their will, and generally make them not themselves. They generally do this because their natural form is some kind of grub or other not-very-formidable state.

They may have limited or total access to the host's memory, but can generally fool casual observers. A possessed host typically gains increased strength, and sometimes additional wacky powers. They may also be able to affect a Voice of Evil or glowing eyes, to let the audience know what's up.

This will fool everyone until the critical moment, even though a possessed host usually starts exhibiting really strange symptoms such as a lack of emotion, a surplus of emotion, violent rampages, festering sores, a flue gill, or a penchant for ketchup.

Sometimes, the possession process actually kills the host, turning them into an animated cadaver. If the host is left alive then they may or may not remain aware while possessed. No matter what the case is, it generally takes a Deus Ex Machina to remove the parasite without killing the host.

The method by which the parasite enters the host body varies; it might be injected, it may latch on to the host's back, or it may enter as some kind of Energy Being. Crawling in through the mouth or ears is also very popular. This trope may also be used as a Anvilicious metaphor for venereal disease.

Also, for some reason, possessed bodies often melt when killed.

Very popular in films during the Cold War era, as it made such a handy parallel for communism. One of the most recent (and most self-aware) film examples is The Faculty.

While the notion is rooted in myths of Demonic Possession as old as mankind, the Sci Fi version is named for the Robert A Heinlein novella The Puppet Masters, which pretty much every instance of this trope is ripping off.

Contrast They Look Like Us Now, where the Masquerade is limited to posing as human without being able to replace/control specific individuals. Can overlap with And I Must Scream.

Examples

Anime

Radam in Tekkaman Blade are tiny arachnids that inhabit and subvert the will of human hosts, who have also been upgraded with the ability to manifest super-armor and summon giant beams and dual-headed spears - the titular Tekkamen. The title character in particular has been upgraded to a Tekkaman but escaped before being infected with a Radam parasite. Too bad the rest of his family and friends have been infected, a fact which powers the angst of the latter half of the show.

Comic Books

In the She-Hulk graphic novel (this was before she turned to surreal meta-comedy) the Cockroach Horde gets around by infesting human bodies.
The Vaylen in the Iron Empires graphic novels and Burning Empires RPG are worm-like creatures that take over the brains of sapient beings, including humans. They have a variety of methods for introducing the worm, all of which are as painful and Squicky as you'd expect.
The Savage Dragon villain Horde.
The Daemonites of WildCATS.
The Rifters of the comic and animated series Delta State.
A relatively recent Spider Man villain worked out that the radioactive spider that bit Peter Parker was the source of Spidey's powers, and ate it. He became a conscious infestation of spiders that could take over other people's bodies, eventually devouring them from within.
Invincible has a variant in the Sequids. One or more Sequids attach to a host, which then comes under the control of the Sequid hive mind; however, the Sequids themselves have nothing other than the basic instinct to attach themselves to other creatures unless they have a host to boost their intelligence and unite the hive mind.

Film

The Strangers in Dark City were squid-like aliens driving around human corpses. "You've seen what we are. We use your dead as vessels."
The aliens did this in the second Starship Troopers movie, which did not happen.
The Bug from the first Men In Black movie did this.
- ... it was a giant space cockroach wearing an "Edgar suit". (Or as the wife pronounced it, an "Eggr suit".)
Another classic movie example, and perhaps the source of the overall Body Snatcher trope's title, is the 1956 film Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. Also the source of the common slang term "pod people" and a definite case of The Stoic writ large. It also is a signficant source of remakes.
- Note that all the Invasion Of The Body Snatchers films are based on Jack Kinney's 1955 novel The Body Snatchers.
His true body blown up in the first ten minutes, Jason does this in Jason Goes to Hell. The host bodies die after Jason leaves them (oddly enough, NOT from the damage they take while he possesses them).
The creature in Proteus absorbs bodies throughout the movie and is able to assume their form from then on. The minds of the victims continue to exist within it and are able to surface when it naps after a meal.
In The Kiss, a worm-like voodoo parasite jumps from the body of a young girl's aunt into her via a kiss. Years later, the parasite strives to take over the body of its current host's niece. The possession allows the host body to grow up, but eventually causes it to rot rapidly, leaving behind a particularly gruesome shell after it leaves.
Done in two different forms in SLiTHER. Grant Grant gets infected by a queen bee alien which retains his memories, and its implied that the two of them are merging personalities, although the alien is clearly dominant. Although he is physically mutating, he is able to convince his wife that it is just a bee sting at first. The rest of the aliens infect people and retain their memories, but the people are completely under their control. They talk and move jerkily and don't even try being stealthy, so it's only natural they don't fool anyone for long.
- Similarly the arguable inspiration for slither Night Of The Creeps
Star Trek II The Wrath Of Khan has a non-sentient alien parasite that invades via the ear; as a side effect of the damage it inflicts slowly crushing the brain, the victim becomes highly susceptible to suggestion. This is not a pure example of the trope, as the eel itself does not control the host, but the victims display many of the same symptoms.
The antagonist in The Hidden was an icky alien resembling a mosquito larva, which forced its way down people's throats and did the Body Surf routine.
The parasites in David Cronenberg's Shivers are a toned-down version of this. While they don't fully take over your free will, they greatly increase your sex drive, causing you to infect more and more people. It's not as hot as it sounds.

Literature

The titular novel by Robert A Heinlein, right down the the physically weak "true form" of the Puppet Masters, a grapefruit-sized globule reminiscent of Metroid's titular creatures.
- By the time it was made into a movie, it was considered a rehash of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. In a case of Executive Meddling, the story was compressed and simplified, and the Puppet Masters were given a trendier "reptilian" form.
The book and TV series Animorphs had the Yeerks, brain-controlling slugs. In a partial subversion, there was one pretty easy (at least, to the right and clever opponent, say Those Meddling Kids) way to remove a Yeerk from its host. They are also a bit more sympathetic, due to their not having evolved on a Planet Of Hats-As it turns out, most of them simply don't know any better. They are also stuck in a I Must Scream type body unless they inflict the same to someone else (this is both described by a friendly Yeerk and experienced by Cassie when she morphs into one).
- Also subverted in that another species, the Iskyoort, are discovered to be a symbiotic (consisting of the vaguely birdlike Isk and the suspiciously Yeerk-like Yoort), which are stated to have been engineered so that neither can survive without the other (this is implied to be why they've become of such interest to the Ellimist and Crayak).
In the sci-fi book Radiant, the lead character Youn Suu is inhabited by a non-communicative, red, moss-like alien called the Balrog, and is given evidence on both angles to whether it is malevolent or benign.
The Yithians are revealed to do this to the protagonist in H.P. Lovecraft's "The Shadow out of Time," a story that combines this trope with Mind Rape.
The German space epic series Perry Rhodan featured a race of alien beings, the "Element of War", in a story arc during the mid-1980s. The aliens, who looked like silvery crabs, telepathically controlled people while sitting on their shoulders (although they could technically cling anywhere to the person's body). They were infamous for increasing the host's agressions and xenophobia and brainwashing him with their constant telepathic whispers until he shared their warlike social-darwinist ideology. Interestingly, the Element of War was itself an artificially created slave race that served an ascended cosmic entity called the Master of the Elements as part of his army, the Decalog of Elements. It multiplied by fissure.
The Souls in Stephenie Meyer's novel The Host are a mostly kind, benevolent race of silvery centipedes who throughly believe that Humans Are Bastards. They infest through the neck and take over the host's mind and body, rendering the host unaware of its surroundings in most cases. On the bright side they cure cancer and keep on making potato chips. Besides their overpowering niceness, the lack of crime and the downfall of good TV acting, the only thing giving the Souls away is a faint neck wound and silver reflective eyes, only visible when bright light is shone at the host's face.
- Mind you, given that, with the exception of the protagonist, the Souls have absolutely no qualms whatsoever about invading planets and destroying the consciousnesses of every single sentient being on these planets, it's hard for a human reader not to suspect My Species Doth Protest Too Much, even if the protagonist doesn't seem to think so.
The entity Tak in Desperation does this as well - but the process of riding along changes the body and causes it to decay if the host's mind isn't strong enough.
Wild Cards has Ti Malice, a parasitic Joker named after a Voudun Loa.
The handlingers of Perdido Street Station, who are given host bodies of convicted criminals by the government of New Crobuzon in return for doing their dirty work.
Stephen King's book, The Tommyknockers, later made into a (miserable) television movie. The effect appears to be from radiation at first, and at first it also appears to be beneficial, at least physically.
Hivers in A Hat Full of Sky, which are strange beings akin to bodiless minds incapable of thought. They target powerful beings whose minds it can take over, slowly filling up every space until there is none of the original left.

Live Action TV

The whole premise of War of the Worlds (television show ONLY) in its first season.
Occasional MO of the Gua in First Wave (though they more frequently used artificial hosts).
Dark Skies was built on this (and Paranoia Fuel, of course.)
Perpetual MO of the Goa'uld in Stargate SG-1.
- They're a bit unusual in that they generally operate overtly. They use human hosts for infiltration on occasion, but mostly just to make up for being tiny helpless ~~slugs~~ snake-fish thingies.
- Also unusually, there's a faction of them (the Tok'Ra) which takes only willing hosts (they naturally give their host a powerful Healing Factor and extend the host's lifetime by at least a century or two, so there is an incentive) and time-share instead of taking over entirely
Star Trek The Original Series used this trope twice. In "Operation: Annihilate!", parastic creatures that resemble flying pancakes attack planetary colonists—and eventually Spock. In "Wolf in the Fold", the Enterprise crew encounter "Redjac", a noncorporeal parasite responsible for numerous serial killings throughout the centuries. One of the humans it possessed was Jack The Ripper.
- In later incarnations of the Trek Verse, the Trill might be an intentional subversion, as they only join with consenting hosts, with the goal of merging their respective consciousnesses.
  - In fact there seems to be competition among the humanoid population of the Trill planet to become hosts; Ezri Tigan (later Ezri Dax) is considered slightly odd for not wanting to be joined.
  - However, the Trill in TNG-unlike those in DS 9-do take over their hosts entirely instead of there being a merging...despite this, it's still portrayed as a deserible thing.
Star Trek The Next Generation: "Conspiracy" also had the Federation nearly conquered by Goa'uld-like creatures who possessed the top Starfleet brass. For that matter, there were a lot of possessing aliens in the Trek Verse.
Star Trek Enterprise. The Xindi Reptillians infect Hoshi Sato with brain-bugs to make her decrypt the weapons codes of the Xindi superweapon, though she is able to resist for a time.
Lexx did this at least twice. In one instance, the preferred method of insertion was rectally.
Babylon 5 had some kind of weird eye creatures with a fondness for Centauri rulers.
- Another Babylon 5 example: "Exogenesis", which subverts the trope. The Vindrizi symbiotes are assumed to be evil, until it's revealed that they're actually benevolent "recorders" who use their willing hosts to witness history, hoping to prevent that knowledge from being lost in "the next dark age" they anticipate.
Doctor Who featured such creatures in "Planet of the Spiders", "The Invisible Enemy", "The Unquiet Dead", the two-parter "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood", and elsewhere. Doctor Who frequently has the "possession kills" version; even if you're sure you can see some of your friend/spouse/etc. in there under the evil alien whatever, if the Doctor says "s/he's already dead," not believing him will relegate you to Redshirt status. (Perhaps this is why The Virus was used in the Everybody Lives story: The Virus is never reversible... except just this once.)
Torchwood used this in "Day One" and "Greeks Bearing Gifts."
The original Outer Limits did two vaguely similar alien parasite episodes.
- In "Corpus Earthling", a race of sentient alien rocks are quietly taking over humans—until they're accidentally discovered by the main character, who has a metal plate in his head that allows him to overhear their telepathic conversations. (Yes, the creatures apparently think in English.) Things get interesting when the aliens respond by possessing the hero's wife and best friend...
- "The Invisibles" combines The Puppet Masters premise with Spy Fiction. An agent of the "General Intelligence Agency" (a Fictional Counterpart of the CIA) investigates alien parasites who have infiltrated humanity by joining with willing, power-hungry humans at both extremes of society: some of the Invisibles are homeless misfits, while others are political leaders, industrialists and military brass.
- An episode of the new Outer Limits had a very brief scene of literal Puppet Masters. The protagonist is down in a secure bunker, where he must push a button every hour to prevent Earth's last-ditch Doomsday Device from going off. The President is talking to him via video from the Oval Office, assuring him that the alien genocide it was meant to avenge is over and they'll relieve him soon, he just has to keep pushing the button until his bunker can be reached. In the episode's final shot, it's seen that the "President" is a corpse in the ruins of the White House, and spindly sea-spider-like aliens have their limbs stuck into him through a gash in his back, working him like a ventriloquist's dummy.
Apparently the premise behind ABC's short-lived series Invasion.
- The show was canceled before it could be made clear, but it appeared to be more a case of "replacement" than "control".
The Buffy The Vampire Slayer episode Bad Eggs featured the Bezoar, a prehistoric parasite whose offspring attached themselves to other creatures and controlled their motor functions.
Primeval} had an episode featuring dodos who were infected by some parasite. It spread to some dude, who's personality changed a lot. He also knew he was infected.
Quatermass 2. Aliens from a nearby asteroid reach Earth via hollow meteorites and start infiltrating the upper echelons of society.

Music

Bob Drake's "The Persecuting Engine" deals with a protagonist that falls victim to "The Thing" which uses the aforementioned Engine "which, from afar / can influence your actions as we wish, distort your perceptions into indecipherable alien ones, [and] replace your will with ours" on him.

A noteworthy example of this is Creature Feature's song "Look to the Skies" which is about aliens that have come to Earth for some sinister reason. The refrain?

We Better Face The Facts,
The Plan's Been Hatched,
Duplicate The Perfect Match,
Then Body Snatch

Tabletop Games

The Dungeons And Dragons supplement "Lords of Madness" details a race called the tsochari, aka "the wearers of flesh," a tentacled alien that replaces its victim's brain and masquerades in its corpse. Or, if they want to, they can also just ride in a living host, tell him what to do, and hurt him if he doesn't do it.
Roach Thralls from the Urban Arcana supplement for the d20 Modern game. The species reproduces by laying eggs inside a living human body, and their larval forms consume said human's brain and internal organs while leaving a sufficiently human-looking carcass to disguise their (somewhat compressed) cockroach form. After 6 months to 2 years, the creature still looks human but can produce and implant eggs of their own into human hosts. The Roach Thrall can shed their human skin if necessary, but this one-way process also renders them unable to reproduce, even with other unmasked Roach Thralls. In the wrong game master's hands, this creature could scare players off of sex for life.
The Kyriotates from In Nomine are a benevolent version of this. They're angels who can control bodies (multiple bodies at once no less!) but they usually only borrow the bodies of willing hosts or non-sapient ones, and do so in the name of good, taking care not to leave the host's body in an injured condition or do things with the borrowed bodies that would cause the host problems. Their evil counterparts, the Shedim also posses their hosts, but are limited to a single body at a time and are driven to make their hosts commit increasingly evil acts. The insidious part is that the host's consciousness is still there and thinks it's still in the driver's seat. Once the host reaches the Moral Event Horizon, the Shedite leaves and the host is left teetering on the brink.
Bog Hags in the Oriental Adventures supplement for Dungeons and Dragons steal the skin of their victims and use it and their limited shapeshifting abilities to impersonate mortals.
Puppeteers from the Dungeons and Dragons supplement the Expanded Psionics Handbook take over the body of anyone that they are in contact with.
Blood-Dimmed Tides from the World Of Darkness line introduced malevolent octopus that wrap invisibly around the victim and drill a tentacle into the base of their neck. Three guesses what happens next.
The Hosts from Werewolf The Forsaken sometimes get around the mortal world in this manner.
In Ravenloft, sea spawn adults ("masters") use their larvae ("minions") to procure victims from coastal villages. The larvae burrow into human hosts' spines and usurp control of their nervous systems. Each host spends a few days luring or forcing innocent victims into the surf, where the hungry sea spawn master awaits, then feeds itself to the master once it's too ravaged by the minion's brain-nibbling to last much longer.

Video Games

The original Zerg, from Starcraft did this, according to the background. In the game, they can still "infest" people, though the victim's appearance changes drastically, except in one occasion in the Brood War extension. (Possibly explained by the possibility that the character wasn't really human, since he broke off from Zerg control when his own goals were completed.)
- Not to mention the fact that said character claimed to have been around since the Xel'Naga fell, which means that he's had an awful lot of time to practice adjusting his appearance... not to mention the fact that everyone needs a hobby.
  - It's implied that Duran is himself a Xel'Naga.
  - Or one of their creations engineered to resemble a Zerg. At the very least, not originally human.
Resident Evil 4 introduces zombies who are not in fact undead; instead of being traditional Hollywood zombies, they're effectively brainwashed slaves — thanks to an injection of The Puppet Masters.
- There are some research notes left behind by Luis which talk about some real life parasites that do this.
In both Half Life games, the iconic headcrabs kill people by jumping at them and then latch onto their heads to turn them into much stronger zombies. In the second game, bombs full of the headcrabs are actually used as artillery by the villains.
- About that description:They are actually half awake and yelling bloody murder backwards from under their fleshy puppetmaster of a hat.
In Mass Effect a colony is taken over by the Thorian; a giant plant controls unsuspecting victims with spores and forces them to do as they wish or suffer extreme pain. This gives the Thorian so much power over its subjects that they will fight to the death rather than disobey - except for the colony's leader, Fai Dan, who resists it's order to kill Shepard long enough to commit suicide. Nice work.
- Which is incredibly irritating, since the cutscene where this otherwise heroic sacrifice occurs is more than long enough that if the player were in control, he could just hit the poor sod with a stun grenade.
The bonethieves from Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem are a particularly nasty example. First they burrow into their victims' chest, then guide them around like puppets. Then, when the host body takes enough damage, the bonethief burst through in a shadow of gore, which isn't exactly healthy to your sanity, and tries to burrow into your chest.
This is the overlying threat you're trying to defend against in X-COM: Apocalypse, as the aliens use aptly-named creatures called Brainsuckers to give people a Face Full Of Alien Wing Wong and put them under alien control. If a Brainsucker converts one of your soldiers in this manner, they're dead as far as the game is concerned.
The Oktigi of Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath are a race of Octopi-like creatures that function like the Brainsuckers above. It is revealed that Sekto is of this species, who after defeat leaves the body of the Olden Steef and escapes into the river.
The Necromorphs in Dead Space are a subversion of this. The marker causes those nearby to go crazy and start killing people, and then takes over the dead bodies.
- Also, a rather disturbing death animation a certain necromorph also qualifies. After taking enough damage, the necromorph will fall to pieces, which will still attack Isaac. If the piece that was the monster's head kills Isaac, it will decapitate him, root itself on his neck, and take over his body.
In Destroy All Humans, body-snatching becomes Crypto's primary way to disguise himself amongst humans by the second game.
The Nomads/Slomon K'Haara in Freelancer are this, with aspects of The Virus: it is strongly implied that Nomad-infested humans can infest other humans as well.
The Morphoids in Nicktoons: Globs of Doom can pull this; while they can fight on their own, the bosses (except for Big Bad Globulous Maximus and two of the bosses in the DS game) are all infected characters with a head full of Morphoid goo.
Even Pokémon has a case in the form of Paras and Parasect. Paras is a simple bug being slowly eaten alive by the mushrooms on it's back, the bug making the best of it's situation by using them for self defense. Parasect is this same bug, virtually dead and covered with the mushroom, which has overridden the insect's nervous system.
In Earthbound, human enemies are controlled by Giygas' influence due to the evil in their minds.
The Flood in Halo does this too. They use fleshy pods to evolve into small, bulbous creatures full of tentacles. Once they find a suitable host, the Infection Forms attach and paralyze the victim before ripping open the chest cavity and nestling inside, taking over the host's nervous system and beginning rapid mutation, culminating in a real ugly abomination known as a Combat Form. Though the host is technically dead, the controller retains enough of the host's experience that Combat Forms are decent marksmen (!). In some cases however, a Combat Form victim is still alive and conscious, occasionally able to regain partial control for a while. The Infection Form is still visible from the outside and destroying it will kill the host too; Infection Forms can voluntarily abandon the host if it sustains heavy damage though if it is killed or removed forcibly, other Infection Forms can take it's place and reanimate the Combat Form. Simply dismembering the C Fs arms won't stop it. Large concentrations of Flood biomass releases spores that can also cause an infection; because of this, the only sure-fire way to eliminate a nest is to burn it with plasma or destroy the biomass via activating the Halo rings.

Web Comics

The Hat, an ugly parasitic hat from Stickman And Cube. It eats people's heads, too.
In Girl Genius, the slaver wasps are themselves tools of a malevolent Spark known as the Other. Also notable in that no Deus Ex Machina has surfaced; death is still the only cure for the slaver-infected.
- Well, probably. Agatha's locket is suppressing her psychic possession by The Other; it might work against the Slaver Wasps, as well. Of course, since there's only one of it...
  - Klaus Wulfenbach seems to be okay after being infected, although it may be simply because the Other is not around giving orders.
The slugs in Jump Leads. They are killable by contact with silks. A real irony for working class soldier that join the army to not wear silk clothes, which is a best mean of defense.

Web Original

John Dies At The End; more apparent in the sequel.

Western Animation

Parodied on Futurama, wherein the efforts of the "brain slugs" to acquire new hosts are always blatantly transparent, as in one episode where a controlled Hermes Conrad informs the crew that their next delivery is to the Brain Slug Homeworld, where their orders are to "just stand around not wearing a helmet". The Brain Slugs themselves are pretty obvious too, being weirdly cute green blobs with big eyes attached to the head of the controlled individual.
- It is implied that the brain slugs not only control but slowly digest the host's brain too. (Or at least feed on the host's brain waves) One of the brain slugs tried to infest Fry's brain, but died of starvation. (Justified in that Fry's brainwaves really are different from everyone else's.)
An interesting case is in Invader Zim, where Word Of God states that Zim's (and every Invader/Irken, actually) body is just a meat puppet. Their true minds are in their PA Ks (the backpack thingies that occasionally sport spider-legs) and separation from the body is lethal. One supposes that this is what inevitably happens after the Puppet Masters have completely overrun your world.
The Brainteasers from Darkwing Duck qualify, and since they look like hats, they go undetected for quite some time.

Truth In Television

Toxoplasmosis is a very real parasitic infection which can affect humans (and the reason pregnant women are advised not to clean cat litter). While nothing on the scale of the science fiction trope, it is now believed that infestation with the parasite may change the personality of infected humans, making men more aggressive and less fearful, while making women warmer and more promiscuous. It also doubles or triples the chances of getting into a car accident. And if I haven't already blown your mind, it is suspected that between 30 and 60 percent of the population of the world is infected.
- Albeit asymptomatic.
- Which reminds me, I've been meaning to get tested for that...
  - You shouldn't worry about things like that. We're sure you're fine.
- The same parasite typically infects rodents and alters their brain chemistry significantly-incidentally, this is why it changes human personalities. The alterations it makes are actually necessary to reproduce: it can only infect rats and mice, but it needs cats innards to breed, so it changes the brain chemistry around to that it's host is attracted to the scent of cat, rather than repelled as normal. Then it gets eaten and the whole process starts again when the cats takes a shit.
While there is little out there that controls humans, parasites that control other species are fairly common.
- Anybody else just get paranoid that we just don't know about them yet?

Examples include:

Horsehair worms which infect grasshoppers while young, then influence their host to go to the water when they are ready to rip through his chest and begin their free-living existence. This is a cricket, but same difference.
A species of fluke extends its eggsack into the antenna of its snail host, then forces the snail to position itself so that its antenna where a bird can easily see it. The bird then eats the infested antenna (swollen to look like a worm) and becomes infected. See it here!
One species of parasite causes ants to crawl up to the top of a plant, bite the edge of a leaf, and just sit there. This greatly increases the chance they will be eaten, allowing the parasite to spread.
- You would be referring to the cordyceps fungus, yes?
There are numerous species of fungus-all specific to one species of insect each-which infest the host and then force them to chill out somewhere where they can catch the breeze and never move again for the rest of their lives, so that the fungus can grow out of their heads and spread more spores to start all over again. Another one infects flies and makes them grip a blade of grass and flap their wings until they die of exhaustion, taking a slightly more active role in spore-spreading.
- The version that targets ants evolved a mechanism where it forces its ant host to climb to a position that overlooks their own hive, so that the entire hive will be infected when the ant dies and starts scattering spores. However, the ants themselves have evolved a mechanism in response to this, so that any time an ant starts showing symptoms of infection the rest of the hive will carry it a long way away so it can die without threatening the hive. This must be the plot for at least five sci-fi horror movies.
- That would be Cordyceps unilateralis, no?