{"id":205504,"date":"2025-02-04T14:14:09","date_gmt":"2025-02-04T20:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/not-science-fiction-scientists-discover-mysterious-zombie-fungus-infecting-spiders-in-irelands-caves"},"modified":"2025-02-04T14:14:09","modified_gmt":"2025-02-04T20:14:09","slug":"not-science-fiction-scientists-discover-mysterious-zombie-fungus-infecting-spiders-in-irelands-caves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/not-science-fiction-scientists-discover-mysterious-zombie-fungus-infecting-spiders-in-irelands-caves","title":{"rendered":"Not Science Fiction: Scientists Discover Mysterious \u201cZombie\u201d Fungus Infecting Spiders in Ireland\u2019s Caves"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/not-science-fiction-scientists-discover-mysterious-zombie-fungus-infecting-spiders-in-irelands-caves.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Scientists identified a new fungus, <em>Gibellula attenboroughii<\/em>, infecting cave spiders in Ireland. The fungus manipulates spider behavior, resembling \u201czombie-ant fungi.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Dr. Harry Evans, Emeritus Fellow at CAB International, led a team of scientists\u2014including experts from the Natural History Museum of Denmark and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew\u2014in a study to identify a fungus discovered on a spider during the filming of the <em>BBC Winterwatch<\/em> series in Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n<p>Through morphological and molecular analysis, the researchers confirmed the fungus as a previously unknown species.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists identified a new fungus, Gibellula attenboroughii, infecting cave spiders in Ireland. The fungus manipulates spider behavior, resembling \u201czombie-ant fungi.\u201d Dr. Harry Evans, Emeritus Fellow at CAB International, led a team of scientists\u2014including experts from the Natural History Museum of Denmark and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew\u2014in a study to identify a fungus discovered on [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":599,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-205504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-futurism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/599"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205504\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}