In a similar vein, I always found it interesting (although frightening) that rabies cause hydrophobia. The theory is that drinking water can wash away the virus from your saliva, inhibiting its ability to spread through bites.
It makes sense that a virus passed through saliva would evolve like this, but I just find it particularly unsettling when a pathogen can effect higher-level behaviors like drinking water (or jumping into water for mantises).
The frightening part is that it’s a cognitive effect. That’s crazy. And it opens the whole “how much of our personality is real versus controlled by microbes” question.
Imagine there was a virus or parasite that just made you feel pleasure, all the time, with no tolerance effects?
I wonder what progress has been made in addiction medicine for meds that simply prevent the development of tolerance? If possible, it would fall under the category of harm reduction. Failing the patient to get sober, they could at least continue getting high on the same amount which might prevent their failure to function.
> I always found it interesting (although frightening) that rabies cause hydrophobia.
Well, there are two potential senses of "hydrophobia".
In its primary use, it means "rabies", and it's not really interesting that rabies would cause that.
In rare cases, it could mean "fear of water", which rabies doesn't cause. Rabies causes pain when swallowing. The pain causes fear through conventional mechanisms.
I have not checked the sources, but according to Wikipedia [1]:
Rabies has also occasionally been referred to as hydrophobia ("fear of water") throughout its history. It refers to a set of symptoms in the later stages of an infection in which the person has difficulty swallowing, shows panic when presented with liquids to drink, and cannot quench their thirst. Saliva production is greatly increased, and attempts to drink, or even the intention or suggestion of drinking, may cause excruciatingly painful spasms of the muscles in the throat and larynx. Since the infected individual cannot swallow saliva and water, the virus has a much higher chance of being transmitted, because it multiplies and accumulates in the salivary glands and is transmitted through biting.
> Sea turtle hatchlings have an inborn tendency to move in the brightest direction. On a natural beach, the brightest direction is most often the open view of the night sky over, and reflected by, the ocean. [0]
Man made artificial lighting greatly affect sea turtle hatchlings also. There are several groups of volunteers who watch the eggs for hatching and will help the sea turtles make their way towards the sea.
The volunteers use apps to coordinate watching the eggs and there is tons of data collected. Using AI / ML to help determine when the eggs will hatch or creating autonomous drones to watch the eggs and perhaps assist in corralling the hatchlings to the sea would make great PhD dissertation subjects.
If you are interested in this subject, Carl Zimmer wrote a great book that has all sorts of examples of parasites that control their host: "Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures"
IIRC, there's some parasite that makes the host (some species of insects) climb up plants, as high as possible, so that it can be eaten by birds and other animals.
So that the parasite can reproduce inside the new host, and spread further.
Cordyceps is a bit different in that it makes the host insect clamp down on a branch or twig until death so that when the fruiting body grows out of the host, its spores are spread through the air, where it can infect similar insects.
What OP is talking about sounds more like the lancet liver fluke, which has a stage of its lifecycle inside an ant and a stage inside a grazing animal, so it makes an infected ant climb to the top of a grass stalk. Amazingly, the ants only do this from dusk till dawn, resuming their normal activities if they haven't been eaten by dawn. The rationale seems to be that being exposed to the hot sun during the day could quickly kill the ant along with its passenger flukes
> Many animals are capable of perceiving some of the components of the polarization of light, e.g., linear horizontally polarized light. This is generally used for navigational purposes, since the linear polarization of sky light is always perpendicular to the direction of the sun.
You can wear polarized sun glasses to help block the light reflected off of roads and water like when driving or boating. Seeking stronger horizontally polarized light would historically lead you to a water source. Adult horsehair worms complete their life cycle in water.
Look at all the examples of manipulation in this thread. I have to wonder just how manipulated humans are everyday and we don't even realize it. It has become 'human nature'.
Just my fantasy scenario, imagine if some kind of yeast/virus affects humans to eat so much sugar, we never need so much sugar, but there's some-kind of yeast inside us that controls us, to create and consume sugar for it.
> imagine if some kind of yeast/virus affects humans to eat so much sugar
I think the gut microbiome can indeed do this.
The episode called "Swap Out Sugar" of the BBC podcast Just One Thing explains more - the relevant section is from after 7 minutes to before 12 minutes into the episode:
Readit News
It makes sense that a virus passed through saliva would evolve like this, but I just find it particularly unsettling when a pathogen can effect higher-level behaviors like drinking water (or jumping into water for mantises).
I wonder what progress has been made in addiction medicine for meds that simply prevent the development of tolerance? If possible, it would fall under the category of harm reduction. Failing the patient to get sober, they could at least continue getting high on the same amount which might prevent their failure to function.
Well, there are two potential senses of "hydrophobia".
In its primary use, it means "rabies", and it's not really interesting that rabies would cause that.
In rare cases, it could mean "fear of water", which rabies doesn't cause. Rabies causes pain when swallowing. The pain causes fear through conventional mechanisms.
Rabies has also occasionally been referred to as hydrophobia ("fear of water") throughout its history. It refers to a set of symptoms in the later stages of an infection in which the person has difficulty swallowing, shows panic when presented with liquids to drink, and cannot quench their thirst. Saliva production is greatly increased, and attempts to drink, or even the intention or suggestion of drinking, may cause excruciatingly painful spasms of the muscles in the throat and larynx. Since the infected individual cannot swallow saliva and water, the virus has a much higher chance of being transmitted, because it multiplies and accumulates in the salivary glands and is transmitted through biting.
It seems more than just "pain when swallowing".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabies
(Or more precisely, it’s already doing the math, and the current answer is that hydrophobia is the better solution [for rabies’ purposes])
Man made artificial lighting greatly affect sea turtle hatchlings also. There are several groups of volunteers who watch the eggs for hatching and will help the sea turtles make their way towards the sea.
The volunteers use apps to coordinate watching the eggs and there is tons of data collected. Using AI / ML to help determine when the eggs will hatch or creating autonomous drones to watch the eggs and perhaps assist in corralling the hatchlings to the sea would make great PhD dissertation subjects.
[0] https://myfwc.com/research/wildlife/sea-turtles/threats/arti...
...
Do people enjoy this crap being put into every fkin discussion on this site? Because I sure as hell have my tank full.
https://www.amazon.com/Parasite-Rex-Bizarre-Dangerous-Creatu...
So that the parasite can reproduce inside the new host, and spread further.
What OP is talking about sounds more like the lancet liver fluke, which has a stage of its lifecycle inside an ant and a stage inside a grazing animal, so it makes an infected ant climb to the top of a grass stalk. Amazingly, the ants only do this from dusk till dawn, resuming their normal activities if they haven't been eaten by dawn. The rationale seems to be that being exposed to the hot sun during the day could quickly kill the ant along with its passenger flukes
I think every Chinese person has heard of it since they were kids.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordyceps
I wonder how much this lowers the rate of infection in the long term.
I wish the article provided and explanation for the mechanism.
> Many animals are capable of perceiving some of the components of the polarization of light, e.g., linear horizontally polarized light. This is generally used for navigational purposes, since the linear polarization of sky light is always perpendicular to the direction of the sun.
I think the gut microbiome can indeed do this.
The episode called "Swap Out Sugar" of the BBC podcast Just One Thing explains more - the relevant section is from after 7 minutes to before 12 minutes into the episode:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09by3yy/episodes/downloads...