Counting down the top 10 living dead of the animal kingdom - Part1

If you have days when you feel like death warmed over, just wait 'til you meet the real-life zombies of the natural world .

We're counting down the top 10 living dead of the animal kingdom, those animals that look like they bit the dust, and yet they're still very much alive .Discover how easy it is to come back from the grave when the living dead are taken to the most extreme .

Earth is a planet of extremes .Extreme places and extreme animals .But some animals are more extreme than others .

Join us as we count down to find the most unusual, the most extraordinary, the most extreme .

Everyone's heard the tale of Sleeping Beauty, a princess trapped in a spell who lay in suspended animation for 100 years .

Well, in the natural world there are real sleeping beauties .These creatures look dead, but are actually alive .As we search for the animal that stays paralyzed for the longest time, we'll discover that these sleeping beauties require more than a kiss from a handsome prince to bring them back to life .

  It's an animal that usually scares the living daylights out of us .Most creatures know not to mess with a snake . But not all snakes are big and scary .That's why one serpent has come up with a very different way of getting out of trouble .

Even a little kitten can be dangerous for a hognose snake .First, it acts tough like its bigger cousins .

 But when that doesn't work, it fakes its own death .The snake fools predators into thinking it's been fatally wounded by deliberately rupturing blood vessels in its mouth, and it produces such a foul stench that even flies are fooled into thinking it's dead .

Only after the danger's passed will the snake return to life .Returning from the grave is a great way to fool predators .It's also become a source of countless horror movies .The most famous of all the living dead are zombies . Our first contender, the hognosed snake, is just an amateur at playing dead .Coming up are creatures that can stay in suspended animation, not for minutes, but for years .Our next contender would definitely win the Academy Award for best performance as a dead animal because when it feels threatened, an opossum plays possum .

 The opossum is number nine in the countdown  because it enters a voluntary coma,  as wildlife educator Dave Riehard explains .

  When opossums feel threatened,  say if a hungry bobcat or coyote  wanders in their direction,  they have the ability to play dead,  and they'll roll on their side, flop out their tongue,  and stay in an almost catatonic state .

 They've been known to stay in this condition  for up to six hours before,  and no amount of prodding, poking, or pinching   Scientists are also unsure just how  the opossum can drop in and out  of a coma in times of danger .

 It's certainly a most extreme defense mechanism  that works well on everything except automobiles .

 Playing possum isn't a good idea on a busy highway .  will make them wake up until they're safe . The possum is relying on the fact  that most predators only like to eat fresh meat .

 So, if the possum acts as if it's already dead,  maybe the predator will think its body is already rotten.

 It'll leave the possum alone,  and go in search of fresher prey .

The poor old tarantula is number eight in the countdown  because it can be turned into  a paralyzed zombie for several days .

 All it takes is an encounter with one of the scariest  animals in the deserts of the American Southwest.

 Meet the tarantula hawk. It's a parasitic wasp that has  no fear of the massive spiders . The female wasp is armed with a venomous sting  that can paralyze a spider in seconds . And now things get nasty . She drags the helpless spider into its own burrow,  then she lays a single egg on the spider's abdomen  and seals the chamber .

 When it hatches, the larva sticks its head  into the paralyzed spider and sucks on tarantula juices, avoiding the vital organs to keep its host  alive for as long as possible . It's a terrible way to die .

So far we've seen a possum that plays dead  and a wasp that spiders dread,  but as our countdown continues  we'll discover how an ant is turned into a zombie  by an animal that lives in its brain,  and later we'll learn that a mummy has no brain at all  because it's been hooked out its nose .

 The next contender in our countdown of the living dead  is already buried underground . It's the earthworm .

 Barring accidents, a worm can live for more than five years,  but these earthworms are as good as dead . They're still alive, but they're virtually paralyzed . They're number seven in the countdown  because they can remain in this  suspended animation for several days .

 And it's all because they ran into  the killer shrews .In Hollywood, the killer shrews were as big as dogs  with sabretooth fangs and a deadly bite .

 In reality, things are a little different . Real shrews are small, and seldom seen,  but they really are terrifying monsters  if you're a worm . That's because shrews are one of  the world's only venomous mammals . Their saliva contains a potent poison . It doesn't do much harm to humans,  but it will turn their prey into the living dead,  as shrew biologist Dr. Joseph Merritt explains .

 Shrews have a really nifty way to deal  with winter shortage of food . Sometimes they paralyze their prey,  they take it to an underground cache .

 It's fresh, it's immobilized,  and it is alive, and they feed on it  for three to four days .The neurotoxins in shrew saliva  work on the nerve cells, paralyzing the prey  sometimes for more than two weeks .

 And in an interesting new plot twist  shrew venom is being injected  into not only earthworms, but humans . Of course, worms have long recognized  the paralyzing power of shrew venom . Once they're bitten there's no escape for these living dead .

But if you think being eaten alive is a horrible fate,  just wait 'til you see what happens    Our next contender has been attacked  by an animal that could have come  straight from a science fiction movie .

 It's a parasitic life form that invades  the brains of other animals so they enter  a state of living death .

These things take over a man's mind?  He becomes a robot, a machine taking orders?  It's an adventure that'll burst  your blood vessels with suspense . See The Brain Eaters .Real-life brain eaters  can be found down on the farm .Luckily, they terrorize not humans, but ants .

 When winter comes and the temperature starts to fall  most ants move out of the grass  and down into their nests underground .But some ants are different,  they're like zombies .

 Their bodies are still alive, but they're under the control  of an animal that's taken over their brain .

 The real brain eater is a parasite  that's lodged in the ant's head .The ant is still breathing, but paralyzed .

 Somehow, the parasite can make the ant  climb to the tip of a leaf and clamp its jaws  onto the blade of grass . In cool temperatures the paralyzed ant  can remain hanging onto the grass stem  for up to eight weeks .

 But this is just the beginning of one of the most  complicated life cycles on the planet . Ants don't usually cling to the tips of grass  because these are the bits that get  eaten by mammals, like rabbits .

 This is bad for the ant,  but it's exactly what the parasite wants  because when it gets eaten it breaks out of  the digestive system and into the liver .

 Here it grows into its adult form,  a parasitic flatworm called a liver fluke  that feeds on blood .

 But now it has to get back to the ant,  so the mature liver fluke produces  thousands of eggs every day .

 Incredibly, these eggs only hatch  if they're eaten by a snail .Phase two begins when the egg hatches  and the parasite moves into the snail's breathing cavity .It's so irritating that the snail  covers the parasite in slime .

 Eventually there's so much mucus  that the snail has to cough up the slime ball .And it just so happens that snail snot  is one of the favorite foods of the ant . It's time for phase three,  where the parasite changes again  and moves into the head,  where it takes control and turns the insect into bunny chow . Strangely enough, there was a time  when human brains were also thought  to be possessed by other creatures .

 With no knowledge of what went on inside the skull  our ancestors found different reasons  to explain mental illness . Some believed that those who acted in strange ways  were possessed by evil spirits .

Back in the middle ages people thought that  when it started to snow all bears would die . That's because when winter arrived  the bears would mysteriously disappear . It was such a miracle when they  came back to life the next spring  that bears became a symbol of regeneration and new life .

 Today we know that bears don't die in winter,  they just head underground .

 Bears are number five in the countdown  because they can spend the winter  in a state of suspended animation .
 They can stay in their den for up to six months . During this time they don't eat,  don't drink, and don't even go to the toilet .

 It's a form of hibernation,  as wildlife biologist at the Grizzly Discovery Center  in West Yellowstone Gail Ford explains .The hibernation is an adaptation that the animals made  to the lack of food, instead of the cold  or lack of light sending them in .

 The animal, the bear, developed a way of  if there isn't any food, you just go to sleep .For bears, hibernation is the perfect solution  for avoiding the harsh winter .Imagine if you could sleep for six months solid .

 You'd save a fortune on food bills .However, there's one man who's supposedly  been in hibernation for more than 1,000 years . His name comes from the Celtic word art, which means bear .