A mind-controlling "zombie" fungus that kills its prey at sunset sounds like the stuff of nightmares. But, according to a group of researchers in California, it's very real. A team led by biologist ...

The popular video game series turned HBO series, “The Last of Us,” is about a terrifying fungus that infects humans, turning them into zombies. This concept is based on a well-known fungus that ...

While filming a TV documentary inside an old Victorian gunpowder store in Northern Ireland, scientists made an intriguing ...

An ant, no longer in control of its body, crawls away from its colony, hangs perilously on a leaf, and waits to die as a fungus consumes its body, emerges from its head, and releases spores into the ...

With their bulging red eyes and their alien-like mating sound, periodical cicadas can seem scary and weird enough. But some of them really are sex-crazed zombies on speed, hijacked by a super-sized ...

To find the world’s most sinister examples of mind control, don’t look to science fiction. Instead, go to a tropical country like Brazil, and venture deep into the jungle. Find a leaf that’s hanging ...

In the video game and HBO show The Last of Us, humans struggle to survive after an infectious fungus turns ordinary people into zombies. Creators of the franchise didn't look far for inspiration — the ...

Scientists have uncovered intriguing new details about a bizarre "zombie fungus" that manipulates the behavior of the carpenter ants it infects—with gruesome results. When the fungus—known as ...

The story of the misplaced virus—a discovery that Michael Eisen describes as one of the wackiest of his career—began with some plates of fruit. In the summer of 2015, Carolyn Elya, a member of Eisen’s ...

A canker on an eastern black walnut tree. The beetle that carries the fungus causing thousand cankers disease is visible in the canker's upper left corner. (Colorado State University photo/Ned ...