How "Zombie" Virus Liquifies Caterpillar Hosts
Picture: Shows a dead Caterpillar hanging from a tree,
that had just died from baculovirus. Author: Brian Handwerk
Publication Date: 9/8/11
Summary: This article mainly talks about how a new virus called baculovirus: a new virus that is infecting and killing Caterpillars. Baculovirus is infecting the Caterpillars and brainwashing their brain, just like a zombie. It then somehow reprograms it to go hang from a tree and wait for its brain to turn into goo and die. After they die just hang from the tree just like in the picture. Then the virus drips on the ground waiting infect more moths or caterpillars. The virus is actually controlling the brain. Scientist have known previous brain washing viruses, but have never seen one like this. This infects the host, makes it go hang from a tree until it dies, and almost distributes itself on the ground waiting to infect something else. This is both scary and and amazing.
Opinion: I think this is a really cool story, but also very scary. I love how the virus almost thinks for itself and tells the caterpillar what it should do. This is a very fact too. We do not know if this virus can spread among species. Also what if the caterpillars in our experiment get affected. That would be really cool, because I wonder what the virus will make it do without the tree. I the humans get affected, then we will just have to prepare for the zombie apocalypse.
Question 1. Can this spread from species to species?
Question 2. Can humans get affected from this virus?
Question 3. Will this virus have the same effect on other species?
Answer1- We do not know if the virus can spread amoung species yet
ReplyDeleteQuestion 1 Answer- we don't know yet if this can spread from species to species.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Varun, this is a weird virus. I would be scared that this virus may start to infect humans. I would start to watch this virus carefully if i were a scientist to make sure it stays under control. I wonder if the virus will make this type of catapillar extinct. I think that someone should keep an eye on what this virus is doing and who it is infecting.
ReplyDeleteQuestion 1: I suppose this virus can travel from species to species but i am not sure if it would have the same effect on another species.
Sorry for posting so late, it would not let me sign on to my blogger.
ReplyDeleteOpinion: I agree we with both Matt and Varun. I feel that we should look more into this virus. This caterpillar infection could be very versatile, and soon kill off many caterpillars. I dont want to kill off caterpillars because quite frankly, we do not know if this is the keystone species stuff we were talking about in class. However, this disease could help the overpopulation levels decrease slightly. I hope our caterpillars dont have this...too early?
question 3: I dont think this disease would have the same effect on species because if it happened to other species, we would know about it, just a thought.
yayyay