Here is an amazing clip from BBC's Planet Earth demonstrating the life cycle of a member of the Cordyceps family of parasitic fungi.
For more, here is the Wikipedia entry on Cordyceps.
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(From the Gilbert Lab at the University of Texas)
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My first landlady in Brookline used to eat those, 'cause they were "good for the skin". She'd heat them up into a sort of stew, which she also fed to her daughters and neices. She said that the herbalist said that they were fungi, that just happened to look like caterpillars. I explained the truth to her... to the disgust of her victims.
By, 'those' above, I meant Cordyceps sinensis. :)
That's funny.
Chinese herbal medicine probably uses every conceivable biological item in some way ...
a wonderful, fascinating video! can't say i have ever tried cordyceps sinensis...
Saw that very same clip in a documentary on how Stargate, the ten year scifi program, borrowed its concepts from real science. In this case, the Goua'uld, the villains in the series, are parasites that take over humans. Cool...
my housemate and i saw this, and were promptly horrified and amazed.
from chatting w/ people that watched this BBC series, it seems to have done quite a bit to increase people's enthusiasm and interest in biology.
even though sigourney weaver DID replace richard attenborough as narrator in the discovery channel version.