"Fun" Facts
Zombies have been
popular in pop culture for years. People seem obsessed with the idea of
gnarly looking flesh eating humanoids coming after seemingly hopeless
survivors in a survival horror setting. It is a different setting in each
movie with the common theme being some sort of unknown virus or pathogen
infecting nearly all of humanity, which brings us to the fun fact involving
O. unilateralis!
A recent survival horror game of 2013 names "The Last
of Us" features a gruesome storyline of a post-apocalyptic society surviving
attacks from fungus infected people, people infected by O. unilateralis
(Hill 2013). It is crazy to think that the zombie ant fungus has made its
own mark on pop culture.
As mentioned before, there has been some news about O.
sinensis being used as a traditional medicine in China and there has
been research into the medicinal potential for O. unilateralis for
medicinal purposes (Panda 2011.)
