Fire Ants

Fire ants are a pesky sub species of ants which sting to kill instead of just biting like normal ants. They inject a venom which gives a similar effect to being stung by a wasp. Within the past few years, the population of fire ants in the United States has exponential increased. Many researchers say that it’s specifically coming from Mexico and bringing an even stronger venomous sting.

Fire ants, unlike normal ants, are widely accepted as a non beneficial species. Thus, control has been attempted and strived for in order to manage the species’ population. A discovery has been made where a special fly named the phorid flies. These flies are able to easily kill off fire ants through injecting larva eggs into the fire ant’s brain. The larva eats away at the fire ant’s brain and severs the head off by releasing an acid that eats away at the neck. While still in the head, the larva will then hatch, using the hollowed head as shelter, after about 40 days. This process, although sounds great, is an extremely slow process for the amount of fire ants already in existent. One of the more interesting details about the process is that the larva, after injected into the brain, is actually able to control the fire ants. This is one of the few forms of the concept of zombies.

A group of professors have released two separate batches of these phorid flies in the United States last year in hopes of helping control the fire ant population. If the flies fail, there are scientists currently working on alternative methods of killing off the fire ants, such as fungi and viruses.

Source: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/05/090515-zombie-ants-flies.html