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Ant parasites that prolong the life of their host
- korse 5y agoAnd this is how you get Goa'uld...
- beebeepka 5y agoIndeed
- mrfusion 5y agoPlot twist. What if wealthy humans are infected with these?
- iamcurious 5y agoInteresting. If that were true, you would see a sudden youthfulness in CEOs, like regaining lost hair.
- djrogers 5y agoBut they will be basically stoned, and won't care about working anymore, so they'll be ex-CEOs.
- jaywalk 5y agoUnless the people around them behave like the uninfected ants and just worship them 24/7.
- felipemnoa 5y agoI know a guy who elicits this sort of worship here in the USA.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y agoLike "meths," from Altered Carbon?
- shagie 5y agoThere's a bit of a story there... http://thequackdoctor.com/index.php/eat-eat-eat-those-notorious-tapeworm-diet-pills/ http://thequackdoctor.com/index.php/eat-eat-eat-those-notori...
- Apocryphon 5y agoWell, we already use botox.
- vmception 5y agoNot really pointing at wealthy humans but I would wager that there are a variety of probable microbe combinations that predictably influence human behavior Between toxoplasmosis from cats that give us more affinity to them at the expense of human relationships, and other unknown gut microbes, its very likely that even selfish behaviors or perhaps empathy are driven by these things Adds another dimension to the “nature” part of the nature vs nurture observation
- totetsu 5y agoThis bit was not too much of a stretch of the imagination.. "The uninfected workers in parasitized colonies, they realized, were laboring harder. Strained by the additional burden of their wormed-up nestmates, they seemed to be shunting care away from their queen. They were dying sooner than they might have if the colonies had remained parasite-free. At the community level, the ants were exhibiting signs of stress,"
- blincolnmercury 5y agoFirst of all, every time a tornado struck and the roof was blown off, instead of running like hell, the infected would stop to stare upward in amazement, possibly waiting for the arrival of a giant bird. That was easy.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mrfusion 5y agoHave they tried introducing these worms into drosophila or even mice? I’d be curious what the effect would be. Also what effect does it have in the birds that carry it?
- iamcurious 5y agoOn the first question, my guess is that it activates queen like behavior on a default ant. So it's not actually giving it powers beyond its species, just reconfiguring the particular setup.
- amelius 5y agoWhat if it's a male ant?
- usefulcat 5y agoAccording to Wikipedia, in larger colonies most ants are sterile, wingless females: "Larger colonies consist of various castes of sterile, wingless females, most of which are workers (ergates), as well as soldiers (dinergates) and other specialised groups."
- Pfhreak 5y agoYes, the parent poster understood that, and was asking about the males specifically because they are relatively rare.
- DFHippie 5y agoThere's a Futurama episode that anticipated this. Fry eats an egg salad sandwich from a truck stop restroom vending machine and acquires a parasitic worm infection that gives him super powers.
- Haga 5y agoSimpsons did it. Futurama foretold it.
- billytetrud 5y agoAren't they symbiotic if they're doing this rather than parasites?
- bencollier49 5y agoIt's weird. Symbiotic to the ant; parasitic to the hive. But then the ant isn't the reproductive unit.
- freehrtradical 5y agoSymbiotic just means two species living close together. That may be positive (mutualistic), neutral (commensal), or negative (parasitism). However, mutualistic and parasitic may not be mutually exclusive. For examples, see: 1. McKay, D. M. (2009). The therapeutic helminth?. Trends in parasitology, 25(3), 109-114, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pt.2008.11.008 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pt.2008.11.008 2. Zaccone, P., Fehervari, Z., Phillips, J. M., Dunne, D. W., & Cooke, A. (2006). Parasitic worms and inflammatory diseases. Parasite immunology, 28(10), 515-523, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-3024.2006.00879.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-3024.2006.00879.x
- wonminute 5y agoIt reminds me of this story. Basically, a healthy host is in the parasite's best interest... https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/19/magazine/the-parasite-underground.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/19/magazine/the-parasite-und...
- dham 5y agoSame with a virus. A virus doesn't want to kill the host. A deadly virus is an unsuccessful virus
- wizzwizz4 5y agoViruses are a little different, though. Retroviruses aside, viruses spread as much and as fast as possible; any mutation that makes them spread more slowly is crowded out, evolution style. So long as it can spread between hosts well enough, a deadly virus is a very successful virus – up until it's driven its host species to local extinction.
- DFHippie 5y agoThe deadliness of a virus doesn't assist its spread. The deadliness doesn't make it more or less successful, everything else being equal, but usually dead hosts are hosts that don't continue to spread the virus, so things aren't equal. In most cases deadliness in viruses is selected out precisely in order to increase their spread.
- trhway 5y agoDeadliness of the virus is just a side effect of its fast spread - the major part of the spread is replication which damages the host. The virus is an optimization problem - replicate and spread as fast as you can as long as the associated host damage and deaths result in the spread decrease smaller than the gain from the replication intensity increase causing that damage and deaths.
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- gaoshan 5y agoSome interesting parallels to us. Sounds like the infected ants could be described as their colony's "job creators".
- axiomdata316 5y ago>"The tapeworm-laden ants didn’t just outlive their siblings, the team found. They were coddled while they did it. They spent their days lounging in their nest, performing none of the tasks expected of workers. They were groomed, fed, and carried by their siblings, often receiving more attention than even the queen—unheard of in a typical ant society—and gave absolutely nothing in return." I wonder if there is a human equivalent tapeworm that the Kardashians have ingested?
- Pfhreak 5y agoLet people enjoy things. If you don't like the Kardashians, fine. I don't either. But clearly some folks do and are willing to help propel them to fame (or notoriety). I know your comment is being glib, but it's emblematic of HN crowds saying, "I don't like this thing, therefore this thing is funny/bad." It costs you nothing to post your comment and just let people like the things they like.
- proxyon 5y agoLet people criticize things. I doubt you'd apply your comment toward your favorite political pet causes. Why are the Kardashians the one thing in our society that is not allowed to be criticized? This whole "let people enjoy things" is cynical, usually coming from the types of people who don't let anyone enjoy anything unless it is degenerate and mind-rotting.
- Pfhreak 5y ago> Why are the Kardashians the one thing in our society that is not allowed to be criticized? They aren't, and I didn't say that. You can criticize the Kardashians all you want. Saying, effectively, "Kardashians are like these ant parasites, amirite guys?" isn't critique. > I doubt you'd apply your comment toward your favorite political pet causes. I think you dramatically underestimate how much I enjoy being critical of things I support, in fact much, much more so than things I oppose. Things I oppose I find easy to not discuss and write off/move past, generally. > This whole "let people enjoy things" is cynical, usually coming from the types of people who don't let anyone enjoy anything unless it is degenerate and mind-rotting. Let people enjoy things comes from a space of "We're all from different backgrounds, who are you to be the arbiter of what's fun?" Whether you are a furry or a larper or a reality tv show junkie or a gun nut.... who the fuck am I to tell you that you can't enjoy that? Obviously, there are limits when other people are involved (like, no, it's not an endorsement of enjoying murdering people), but I'm not out here trying to say that only lowest common denominator things are allowed.
- codeflo 5y agoNot a biologist, but my impression is that in some of ways, individual ants behave more like cells in a multi-celled organism than individual animals. The hive is the organism. (The analogy is certainly not perfect.) Considering that, I don't find this paradoxical at all, still very fascinating. Please correct me if my understanding is wrong, but I think cancer also in some sense helps the individual cell at the cost of the organism. For example, cancers induce the formation of cappilaries to get more nutrients -- not so dissimilar from these infected ants inducing other ants to feed them.
- slver 5y agoMost species have social behavior and live in groups, to different degrees. Individuals in a society and cells in an organism are also analogous. So while you're right to call them acting like cells in organism, I'm uncertain what "than individual animals" would mean.
- samatman 5y agoWhile this is true, eusociality is fairly distinctive. The part where most of the colony can't breed is what really stands out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality This does make individual hymenopterans less like individuals of other species, which are in competition with others of the same gametes for the privilege of breeding and the survival of their offspring. Hymenopterans are more individual than slime molds: they're multicellular, have their own organs, and so on. But less individual than any other form of multicellular animal life. It isn't altruistic, in a Darwinian sense, for a drone to give its life for the colony, because it isn't able to breed, the only way it can pass on its genome is by protecting the queen. I'm pretty confident what was meant is "than more individualistic animals".
- slver 5y agoBut most of our cells can "breed". Inability to divide happens only where it's necessary, like blood cells. It's not a social feature on its own. So I'm unsure why this is important about ants. Is "can breed" the ultimate clue of individualism? But again, this makes most of our cells... "individuals".
- tuxie_ 5y agoDo they play the holophonor too?
- forgotmypw17 5y agohttps://archive.is/VdYyq https://archive.is/VdYyq
- gumby 5y agoThe use of the word "parasite" seemed odd to me: at first blush they seem symbiotic: the ant gets the tapeworm; what it eats feeds the tapeworm too, and the ant gets a long and pampered existence. This, truly, is a symbiotic, not parasitic relationship. However, it may be good for a single ant, but if you view the entire colony as an organism, what the tapeworm does is transform its host into a parasite upon the colony (this is mentioned in the article too). Thus, by transitivity, one might consider the tapeworm a parasite, not upon its host organism itself but upon the colony. Quite interesting. BTW parasite was an actual job in Roman times, though a non-medical one.
- huachimingo 5y agoLike in Metal Gear Solid!
- andyxor 5y agoReminds me of parasites in Stargate giving their host longer lifespan and superpowers
- senden9 5y agoExactly what I thought when I read the title!
- andy_ppp 5y agoI’ve thought humans have been a plot for the microbiome to procreate for a while now, in essence you’re just a safe place for various bacteria to keep you alive. Have no illusions about how important they think you are ;-)
- taneq 5y agoWe're starships for mitochondria. :)
- swagasaurus-rex 5y agoWe’ll be flying starships to other planets for our mitochondria to spread
- YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago>> The worms’ MO is subtle and ingenious. They are agents not of disaster, but of an insidious social sickness that sets reality only slightly, barely perceptibly, askew. Infected workers get a taste of invincibility and status, swaddling themselves in youth and the benefits it brings. They also form resource sinks that sap the energy of those around them. They become echoes of the microorganisms they harbor. They are, in the end, parasites themselves. Wait this is a parable, right? The ant colony is human society, the worker ants is all of us and the parasitissed ants are the celebrities that we feed and adore and give nothing back except feelsies.
- Guthur 5y agoThere was an article yesterday about the spitfires engine and there were a number of comments about long form journalism, and I'd like to comment on that even though not directly about the subject matter. I stopped reading the other article quite quickly but read this one completely. I feel the writing style was night and day, the other article felt antagonistic and full of personal politics while this one had that sense of wonder at science and knowledge.
- fouc 5y ago> The tapeworms’ grasp of ant aging is far more advanced than ours.
- frogcoder 5y agoI just watched a classic Star Trek episode. I'll try not to give any spoilers for those that have not watched it. Bunch of human were infected by some kind of plant, they became super healthy but content. The episode deemed the infected ones unproductive, but I think that's some life worth living.
- Doxin 5y agoIs that the episode with the plants that explode in a way that totally doesn't look naughty at all?
- frogcoder 5y agoBy totally doesn't look naughty at all is spewing white matter onto human faces, no, not naughty at all. Yep, I think we are talking about the same episode where star fleet officers do naughty things.