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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

It's the spooky season, so let me regale you with a story about the fungus, Entomophthora muscae. This fungus is particularly fond of the house fly. By fond I mean that if its spores settle on a fly, it then penetrates the insect's outer layer, infiltrates its circulatory system and sets up shop in the brain, controlling the insect's behavior. From the inside out, the fungus feeds on the fly and directs it to crawl to a high point so the fungus can shoot it spores further into the air -- and carry on the great circle of life.

A team of scientists from the Netherlands and Denmark was intrigued by how exactly spores were ejected from the corpse of a dead fly. Because it's quite difficult to control experiments of "wild" fungus and examine how the spores are being jettisoned, the team decided to build its own zombie fungus cannon that mimicked the real thing.

And the real thing is, it's no joke -- it fires spores at about 10 meters per second (or 22 miles per hour).

The cannon's construction is detailed Tuesday in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, revealing some of the likely inner workings of the spooky zombie fungus' artillery.

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