A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
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zombie fungus
Zombie fungus is the popular name for the species of Ophiocordyceps that alter the behavior of the insects they grow in. An infected ant leaves its colony, climbs to a particular height on the underside of a leaf, locks its jaws onto a vein, and stays there while the fungus consumes it and pushes a stalk out through the back of its head to release spores over the trail below.
Etymology
The English name is modern and journalistic and it has stuck because it is accurate enough. The genus is on this site under cordyceps, and the Latin means, roughly, snake-headed club, for the shape of the fruiting body. The Tibetan name for a related species, summer grass winter worm, is the better piece of naming and is many centuries older.
Notes
The precision is the striking part. Infected ants are found at a consistent height and orientation, and the biting happens within a narrow window around solar noon, all of which places the spores exactly where they will fall on foraging workers. Alfred Russel Wallace described the phenomenon in the 1850s. The fungus does not control the brain directly; it appears to work on the muscles, so the ant is aware and not steering.