The Zombie Apocolypse has Started! (For Honeybees at least)

Although, this seems more Alienesque to me.

The article in a nutshell: Scientists have discovered, purely by accident, that a fly parasite is the most definite cause of the mass die-offs of honeybees.

It basically turns the bee into a zombie, by making them move around in circles, instead of just curling up and dying.

Thoughts?

edited 4th Jan '12 6:56:24 PM by tclittle

So it's not because of cell phones and wifi and TECHNOLOGY IS EVIL!!! ?

That's good to know.

My thought is that we need to rethink the potential zombie apocalypse. Who says it has to be humans who get infected with the terrible disease? It could be our food sources suddenly turning poisonous on us.

Your link broke. Try this one. So it's basically like cordyceps, where it hijacks the brain and then kills the host?

The zombie apocalypse could easily be transmitted at some point in the future from one animal to humans.

Works for me... /shrug (I'm using Firefox 9, so maybe that's the problem.)

edited 4th Jan '12 7:01:14 PM by tclittle

This isn't a zombie apocolypse! The bees are still alive when they're moving around! This is hardly the first case of a parasite hijacking the brain of the host:

One

Two

Three

Rabies may be a disease, but it does hijack the brain in strange ways. The hydrophobia angle is especially strange: agression, of course, ends up furthering the disease, but why do the rabid fear WATER?

edited 4th Jan '12 7:10:09 PM by Katrika

It reminds them of something hungrier than they are...

No, actually, it's not fear of water (that'd be aquaphobia) but "The production of large quantities of saliva and tears coupled with an inability to speak or swallow are typical during the later stages of the disease; this can result in hydrophobia, in which the patient has difficulty swallowing because the throat and jaw become slowly paralysed, shows panic when presented with liquids to drink, and cannot quench his or her thirst."

So it's more akin to hydrophobic in the chemical sense "water-repellant". As to why, I assume an instinctual response to not being able to swallow.

Ah...it's more a reasonable fear of drowning, than?

Some more poking around on google suggests it's because there's a great deal of pain when trying to swallow.

Technically-Living Zombie

People infected with rabies fear water because they are dying of thirst but cannot take a drink, and in their already brain-addled state the frustration turns to rage and fear. It's sort of like that old Greek legend where Famine cursed a man to always be hungry no matter how much he ate, and he eventually went mad at the sight of food.

It has begun...

edited 5th Jan '12 5:33:04 AM by MrsRatched

I have to think of those old Cartoons where Bees would form words with the swarm, just this time: BRAINS!!

As a prospective beekeeper preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse, this terrifies me.

We've had a pretty good idea for a while now that humans weren't directly responsible for this. IIRC the previous theory was a one-two punch of an immunodeficiency virus and a fungal infection.

Scary. Though as far as bee zombies are concerned, I still find the methods of the African Cape Bee a lot scarier.

Time for complete global saturation.

@Thread tittle: Great, you do know that bees dying IS serious problem right?

edited 11th Jan '12 8:35:42 PM by SpookyMask

M. Night was right and...we didn't listen. We didn't listen!

Well, I now need to go around school and share this information because it's actually pretty damn cool.