What humans might learn from nature’s real

Zombies, it turns out, are real — and science journalist Mindy Weisberger can give you plenty of examples of them.

She’s read up on the fungi that take over flies’ bodies, partially digesting them from the inside out before forcing them to climb up blades of grass, so that fungal spores can explode out from their swollen corpses and claim new victims.

She’s considered the hairworms that grow inside of crickets before inducing their hosts to toss themselves into a nearby body of water, where the worms emerge from the crickets’ exoskeleton in a miniature but all-too-real imitation of the alien in Alien.

She’s even researched the snails that fall victim to certain flatworms. The flatworms’ larvae need to be eaten by birds to reach the next stage of their lifecycle, so broodsacs full of lar