Ok, so they aren’t really zombies because they aren’t actually dead. However, these ants are under mind control by a parasitic flatworm called the liver fluke. There is a more humorous take on the whole story on The Oatmeal but according to an article by Science World:

Along comes an ant, host number three. It swallows a slime ball teeming with hundreds of baby lancet flukes. Most flukes just hang out in the abdomen, but one or two “scouts” locate and high jack the ant’s command center: nerves below the throat that control the ant’s movements. The scouts then perform parasitic voodoo on the ant’s nervous system.

As night approaches, an infected ant climbs up a blade of grass—instead of heading back to its colony. As the air cools, the ant clamps down on the tip of a grass blade and waits to be eaten by a cow or other grazer. If the ant should sit the whole night without being eaten, the flukes let the ant loosen its grip on the grass—if the ant were to bake in the morning sun’s heat, the parasites would die along with the ant.

The ant scurries to the ground and behaves like a normal insect again. But when night falls, the flukes command the ant to again climb a blade of grass. When a grazing cow eats the ant, the flukes settle in the cow’s small intestine.

Then they worm their way to the cow’s liver, where they live out their lives as adults.

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