What does Pedro Pascal have in common with a yeast bun?

Pedro Pascal, the actor, starred in the 'adventure game'-based series 'The Last of Us', in which fungi attack humans and turn them into dangerous zombies.

The creators of the game were inspired by a real predatory fungus, the ant-lurker or Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, which actually turns… ants into mindless zombies. The fungus first eats the poor ant from the inside, then attacks its brain and 'forces' it to climb high up a tree, where the fruiting body of the fungus (i.e. what we commonly call a mushroom) sprouts from the ant's head and releases spores. The spores fall down and infect new ants. It is a perfect, if somewhat disturbing, example of how fungi can manipulate the behaviour of other organisms.

And what does yeast have to do with it? Yeast is also a fungus – Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Homo sapiens have been using yeast for at least 5,000 years. Evidence suggests that yeast was used in China and ancient Egypt to make bread. In what is now Georgia, it was used to brew beer and wine as early as 6,000 years before our era. It is believed that yeast was one of the first organisms to be domesticated, long before the 'invention' of agriculture or animal husbandry.

Yeast is necessary for the fermentation process. This process was thoroughly investigated and described in 1876 by Louis Pasteur, the same man who invented the rabies vaccine and demonstrated that diseases are caused by microorganisms, i.e. germs. Pasteur studied fermentation using beer and wine as examples, because without yeast there would be no alcohol.

But what if it was actually yeast that domesticated us? Made Homo sapiens sapiens dependent on alcohol to ensure its own survival….