Is it beautiful to see spores sneak into an ant’s trachea, then creep into the ant’s brain where they take over, driving the ant to insanity, causing the ant to crawl to the top of a blade of grass, where the fungi destroys the remainder of the ant’s brain, then sprouts fruiting bodies right out through what remains of the ant’s head?
I don’t remember ever hearing that any sentimental songs were ever written about this entirely natural dance of life featuring fungi motherhood.
I first heard of this process a few years ago when I watched one of David Attenborough’s incredible documentaries. You’ll find an excerpt of a relevant Attenborough video here at Neurophilosophy, [1]along with a brief written explanation of the fungus’ cycle of life.
This insect exploitation is a good example to keep ready for the next time someone irks you with the claim that everything in nature is “beautiful” in a Bambi eats strawberries sort of way.
I do think nature is beautiful, but that beauty is better captured in the way that nature is exquisitely calibrated in a fine-grained sometimes warlike hard-to-watch type of equilibrium.
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