The zombie has had a bit of a renaissance over the last decade. It seems like zombies are everywhere. From recent films like World War Z to popular TV shows like The Walking Dead, we’ve reached peak zombie saturation in American culture. Communities throughout the country hold zombie runs and races. In 2016 the first zombie-proof house was built, complete with concrete walls that move over the structure so that it’s completely sealed. Even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention compiled a preparedness guide “in case” of a zombie apocalypse. So what’s driving the zombie obsession in American culture? Where did the fear of this creature originate? In this eBook, The Real Zombies of Nature, we look at the myth of the zombie versus real instances of zombification in the natural world and engage in some scientific speculation about what would happen if myth ever became reality.

A brain-bending exploration of real-life zombies and mind controllers, and what they reveal to us about nature—and ourselves Zombieism isn’t just the stuff of movies and TV shows like The Walking Dead. It’s real, and it’s happening in the world around us, from wasps and worms to dogs and moose—and even humans. In Plight of the Living Dead, science journalist Matt Simon documents his journey through the bizarre evolutionary history of mind control. Along the way, he visits a lab where scientists infect ants with zombifying fungi, joins the search for kamikaze crickets in the hills of New Mexico, and travels to Israel to meet the wasp that stings cockroaches in the brain before leading them to their doom. Nothing Hollywood dreams up can match the brilliant, horrific zombies that natural selection has produced time and time again. Plight of the Living Dead is a surreal dive into a world that would be totally unbelievable if very smart scientists didn’t happen to be proving it’s real, and most troublingly—or maybe intriguingly—of all: how even we humans are affected. “Fantastic . . . You'll be thinking about this book long after you're done reading it.” —Kelly Weinersmith, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Soonish

Are zombies real? As far as we know, dead people do not come back to life and start walking around, looking for trouble. But there are things that can take over the bodies and brains of innocent creatures, turning them into senseless slaves. Meet nature's zombie makers—including a fly-enslaving fungus, a suicide worm, and a cockroach-taming wasp—and their victims.

Audisee® eBooks with Audio combine professional narration and sentence highlighting to engage reluctant readers! Are zombies real? As far as we know, dead people do not come back to life and start walking around, looking for trouble. But there are things that can take over the bodies and brains of innocent creatures, turning them into senseless slaves. Meet nature's zombie makers—including a fly-enslaving fungus, a suicide worm, and a cockroach-taming wasp—and their victims.

Truth is stranger than fiction, right? Find out where you can uncover real-life vampires and zombies. Learn about crazy mutations, and discover animals with amazing super powers. Pop culture tie-ins and freaky facts hook readers into learning about animal and plant science. They may seem like stories from comic books, but you might find these freaky plants and animals in your own backyard. This photo-illustrated book for elementary readers describes animals that seem to take over the brains of other animals. Explains how parasites can alter their hosts' behaviors to use the host for their survival.

30 bloodcurdling and bone-chillingly real-life zombie encounters. Not recommended for reading when a virus hits! Paranormal researcher extraordinaire and author of hundreds of books on the mysterious and unknown, Brad Steiger provides an alarming chronicle of zombie history, and stories of first-person encounters. Along with the bloodcurdling stories, Real Zombies, the Living Dead, and Creatures of the Apocalypse explores spells and hexes; ceremonies and initiations; ghouls and wendigos; sacred zombie and voodoo-related sites; zombies and monsters of the Bible; and zombie traditions in China, Japan, the Pacific, India, Persia, and Native America. Some of the topics and stories chewed over in this fascinating book include... Zombies versus Vampires Damballah Wedo and the African Pantheon Black Cat Mama Couteaux and the Great Zombie War The Devil Baby of Bourbon Street Recipes for Hungry Ghosts Eating Human Flesh as a Religious Experience Hitler’s Quest to Zombify the World The CIA Experiments to Create a Zombie Nation Golems and Tulpas—Psychic Zombies Zombies and Voodoo Magic around the World And many, many more hair-raising stories! Highlighting news articles, historical accounts, and first-person interviews, Real Zombies, the Living Dead, and Creatures of the Apocalypse will leave you worried about whether man can survive the next plague.

A look at the true nature of the zombie brain Even if you've never seen a zombie movie or television show, you could identify an undead ghoul if you saw one. With their endless wandering, lumbering gait, insatiable hunger, antisocial behavior, and apparently memory-less existence, zombies are the walking nightmares of our deepest fears. What do these characteristic behaviors reveal about the inner workings of the zombie mind? Could we diagnose zombism as a neurological condition by studying their behavior? In Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep?, neuroscientists and zombie enthusiasts Timothy Verstynen and Bradley Voytek apply their neuro-know-how to dissect the puzzle of what has happened to the zombie brain to make the undead act differently than their human prey. Combining tongue-in-cheek analysis with modern neuroscientific principles, Verstynen and Voytek show how zombism can be understood in terms of current knowledge regarding how the brain works. In each chapter, the authors draw on zombie popular culture and identify a characteristic zombie behavior that can be explained using neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and brain-behavior relationships. Through this exploration they shed light on fundamental neuroscientific questions such as: How does the brain function during sleeping and waking? What neural systems control movement? What is the nature of sensory perception? Walking an ingenious line between seriousness and satire, Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep? leverages the popularity of zombie culture in order to give readers a solid foundation in neuroscience.