Zombies

Hijacking the body of another animal is nothing new in the opportunistic world of parasitism. But for the first time, scientists have observed how one crafty flatworm can switch ‘zombie mode’ on and off, leaving its host ant stuck between life and death.

The animal kingdom is home to all kinds of stories – even horror stories. Scientists at Brown University have now uncovered a creepy new zombie story involving worms that propagate by hack their shrimp host's genome to take control of their minds.

In the third BMC Ecology and Evolution image competition, a stunning snap of the invasive orange pore fungus (Favolaschia calocera) has not just encroached on native species’ territory but taken out the top spot in the annual contest.

A fungus is known to control the minds and bodies of ants to help itself reproduce, but it’s not the only insect to use the morbid tactic. Certain species of parasitic wasps have been found to “zombify” spiders, and now a new review paper has examined exactly how the insects pull off this feat.

To us vampires are the stuff of movies, but for many ancient cultures the undead were seen as a very real threat. Now archaeologists excavating a children’s cemetery in Italy have uncovered the skeleton of a child with a large stone jammed into its mouth, to prevent the body returning from the dead.

It’s one of nature’s most disturbing horror stories: a fungus takes control of a living ant to spread spores through the colony. But now a study led by Penn State University has found that the fungus makes these “zombie ants” without directly infecting the brains of its hosts.

For people in medieval England, zombies weren’t fictional entertainment, they were an existential threat. Bones from a medieval North Yorkshire village have been found to bear telltale battle-scars, when the living took some extreme measures to make sure the dead stayed dead.

We've seen zombie apocalypse fiction in nearly every form of storytelling. With virtual reality opening up a new media frontier, it's only natural the undead will inevitably creep into your favorite VR headset. Arizona Sunshine manages to put you inside the zombie Armageddon like never before.

British firm Tiger Sheds has turned to Kickstarter in an attempt to reanimate its Zombie Fortification Cabin (ZFC-1) concept. Should funding prove successful, the "zombie-proof" cabin will be used as part of an interactive horror experience.

The Motoped Black Ops is a shameless, shallow grab for attention that has 100 percent done its job on me. A zombie hunting moped? Seriously? But the product behind it is actually pretty sweet. A highly customizable moped with a 500-mile range, 200 mpg efficiency and heavy-duty engineering.

"Virtual reality needs its arcade moment," argues Zero Latency co-founder Tim Ruse. The Oculus Rift and Project Morpheus headsets may be set to dominate your living room, but the Melbourne-based startup is aiming bigger – offering full immersion with body tracking and real space to move around in.

The zombie-killing gore masters at IRLShooter are preparing to launch their second "real life video game" in Melbourne – Lazarus.