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Mind-controlling parasite makes hyena cubs more reckless around lions
- personjerry 5y agoSimilarly, there is a flatworm parasite that takes over a snail's mind, turns its eyes into colourful pulsating beacons to attract predator birds to eat it, parasitizes the bird, and then leaves its eggs in the bird poop for more snails to eat later. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leucochloridium_paradoxum https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leucochloridium_paradoxum National Geographic video (warning, kinda gross): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Go_LIz7kTok https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Go_LIz7kTok
- nielsbot 5y agoThere's also: - cordyceps fungi that cause ants to climb to high branches and clamp their jaws to them before dying so the fungus' can sprout out of their heads: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/cordyceps-zombie-fungus-takes-over-ants https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/cordyceps... - Anomotaenia brevis: a tapeworm that causes ants to live unnaturally long lives and emulate the queen ant's pheromones causes the colony to expend energy feeding the infected ants at the expense of the rest of the colony: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomotaenia_brevis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomotaenia_brevis And for another plain gross entry: a tongue-eating louse that eats and takes the place of a fish's tongue. I guess it gets to eat when the fish eats? https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/tongue-eating-fish-parasites-never-cease-to-amaze https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/tongue-ea...
- ianmcgowan 5y agoMakes you wonder if some kind of CO2-loving parasite isn't infecting humanity...
- nielsbot 5y agoYou could consider human self-awareness a kind of parasite that feeds on convenience.
- ajuc 5y agoIt's called capitalism :)
- SuoDuanDao 5y agoWhen communism fell in East Germany, pollution actually dropped for a while as living standards rose, because a lot of inefficient coal plants were replaced.
- gruez 5y agoAre you suggesting that carbon emissions do not exist outside of countries that have private ownership of production?
- ComodoHacker 5y agoThese "chipization" conspiracies suddenly start looking more creepy. Imagine some controlled (or uncontrolled) infection indeed can cause humans to take some specific risky behaviors. For example, gambling or taking more credits.
- DyslexicAtheist 5y agoor some parasite that makes us believe everything is a system, spot patterns everywhere, and approach all "problems" with systems thinking, when reality is just chaos.
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y agoReality being chaos would be systematic, too.
- eru 5y agoWheat has been pretty successful in domesticating humans, so far.
- DyslexicAtheist 5y agoTotally unrelated (or perhaps due to a parasitic conspiracy idk) Dave Aitel an infosec policy influencer just started a company by the name of cordyceps. First time I heard of it in nearly 50 years of my life was reading his twitter, now it pops up on this timeline few days later. https://twitter.com/daveaitel/status/1410308330808135691 https://twitter.com/daveaitel/status/1410308330808135691
- DoreenMichele 5y agoThis is about toxoplasmosis. It is also known to increase the odds that an infected rodent will get itself eaten by a cat: Infection with T. gondii has been shown to alter the behavior of mice and rats in ways thought to increase the rodents' chances of being preyed upon by cats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis It can infect humans. It may be a risk factor for schizophrenia, OCD, bipolar disorder and other mental health issues. The evidence seems inconclusive at this time.
- kekebo 5y agoThe change of rat behavior seemingly being based on inverting rats' aversion to cat odors into developing an actual attraction for them [0]. Robert Sapolsky's work is an abundant resource on the topic[1]. [0] https://www.pnas.org/content/104/15/6442 https://www.pnas.org/content/104/15/6442 [1] https://scholar.google.de/scholar?hl=en&q=sapolsky+toxoplasmosis https://scholar.google.de/scholar?hl=en&q=sapolsky+toxoplasm...
- feketegy 5y agoIt's not that black or white though, more than 60% of the World population has been infected with Toxoplasmosis, yet you don't see people running towards lions at every corner. The path how the parasite infects rodents, then cats, then humans is very complex and not at all consistent, most articles on the Internet dumb it down way too much. This Youtuber has an awesome explanation on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdlHNhrMw-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdlHNhrMw-A Also, his channel is translated from Hungarian, it's an awesome channel btw.
- TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago> yet you don't see people running towards lions at every corner. The headline says more reckless. I wouldn’t consider it a stretch to say some people are definitely more reckless. Whether there’s a causal link, I couldn’t say.
- SuoDuanDao 5y ago
- jobigoud 5y agoOne thing about mind controlling parasites that's bugging me is that we only ever hear about the extreme cases when it's very visible because the host does something counter intuitive from an evolutionary point of view. But statistically there must be many more cases where the effect of the mind control is just partial, not evolutionary suicide or even beneficial. How spread is this phenomenon really? How many generations does it take for a parasite to evolve into such spectacular effect, where are the non spectacular mind controlling parasites and how are they influencing their host?
- tudorw 5y agoMaybe this is where we will find consciousness, we're just mobile meat based storage for parasites to hang out in...
- mekkkkkk 5y agoI really know very little about this, but I sometimes imagine my body as a society of microbic life, with my mind being a pseudo-democratic governing body. It's an interesting perspective, were you essentially are responsible for the well-being and perseverance of your billions of law abiding micro-citizens. There are plenty of pop-sci articles about how the microbiome seems to be influencing our nervous system in a multitude of ways. So the microbes may actually have a way to "vote" in my analogy.
- tudorw 5y agoThere is certainly lots going on inside, loads of areas of study at the monment look at gut-brain axis (GBA) and stuff like 'Gut bacterial taxonomic abundances vary with cognition, personality, and mood in the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study' https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666354620301204 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266635462... 'Highlights • Multiple families, genera, and species were associated with psycho-cognitive traits. • Megamonas is associated with cognition, mood, and personality. • Pseuroramibacter_Eubacterium is associated with mood and personality. • Fusobacterium is associated with personality and cognition. • Butyrivibrio is associated with cognition.' Edit: just to add I'm a layperson so not able to asses the quality of this study, if someone is more able to do that I would welcome the input.
- jobigoud 5y agoOne thing about mind controlling parasites that's bugging me is that we only ever hear about the extreme cases when it's very visible because the host does something counter intuitive from an evolutionary point of view. But statistically there must be many more cases where the effect of the mind control is just partial, not evolutionary suicide or even beneficial. How spread is this phenomenon really? How many generations does it take for a parasite to evolve into such spectacular effect? Where are the non spectacular mind controlling parasites and how are they influencing their host?
- bryanrasmussen 5y agoIs there a disease that makes us love cats - https://news.emory.edu/stories/2016/07/esc_loving_cats/campus.html https://news.emory.edu/stories/2016/07/esc_loving_cats/campu...
- kashug 5y agoIt might not hit the news, but people are looking into things like how gut microbacteria might affect your brain and behaviour [1]. From what I can see it looks like it is more and more accepted that microorganisms affect us in many different ways. [1] https://icds.uoregon.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/CryanDinan2012_MindAlteringOrganisms.pdf https://icds.uoregon.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/CryanDin...
- SuoDuanDao 5y agoI was going to mention sugar-loving fungi in our gut causing sugar cravings. Fascinating to think about next time my sweet tooth acts up.
- thatcat 5y agoI wonder what would happen if you made candy with some antifungal compound, maybe it would reduce the craving for sugar..
- SuoDuanDao 5y ago
- pvaldes 5y agoFor 600th time... Toxoplasmosis is NOT a "mind controlling" parasite. Ill animals are preyed more often than healthy animals. THIS IS NORMAL. Because they are ill (and predators have an essential role as cleaners of ill animals). If a bullet hits somebody (non-fatally) in the head, a common outcome is the behavior of this person changing forever. The bullet is not remote mind-controlling them from the drawer of the physician; It has caused some brain damage that is a different concept. Toxoplasmosis does exactly the same. It causes a brain damage in the cub, so they are more vulnerable.
- amelius 5y agoYeah, the closest most people here have been to a mind controlling parasite is Facebook.
- leoedin 5y agoGiven how effective natural selection is for selecting surviving traits, why are you so sure that a parasite can't have some level of behaviour altering effects? Sure, it's probably not an inner monologue telling the hyena where to go, but it does appear that infected animals are either more reckless in general, or less cautious when faced with lions specifically - a behaviour which helps the parasite reproduce. Do you have any sources for your claim that that toxoplasmosis doesn't have any behaviour altering effects?
- pvaldes 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot
- lazyjones 5y agoAgreed, the conclusions about mind control or altered behaviour are unsupported by the observations. For example, hyena cubs with the parasite getting closer to lions might simply be due to worsened sense of smell or vision, or less attention due to pain etc. ... We unfortunately live in a time where science profits from sensationalist speculation.
- Haga 5y agoDisclaimer: Pettheory The mind in the gut,might in its own way be a behavior controlling parasite. Think about it, it has full biochemistry diagnostics. It feels poisons and might detect cancer long before the game is over. Its answer? Accelerate making a copy, aka a kid. So if you start a family get a colonoscopy..
- piokoch 5y agoWhy toxoplasomosis is getting trendy suddenly? I've just read another article on this that was trying to scare people, obviously without any merit [0]. Is some company creating vaccine for this and needs some marketing? The first comment says "It may be a risk factor for schizophrenia, OCD, bipolar disorder and other mental health issues. The evidence seems inconclusive at this time. " Yes, it can cause all those horrible things (I think that only autism is missing on the list), only there is no proof for that, but, nowadays, who cares if the story fits twitter size post and has a chance to get "viral". [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27615857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27615857
- politicorific 5y agoYes, I’ve noticed several articles in the past week on the subject. The resurgence of this topic has me looking for a presentation I watched perhaps 5-10 years ago where the presenter suggested humorously that the Victorians popularized and normalized cat pet ownership at the level we now know (having cats indoors) because they were afflicted with toxoplasmosis. The presenter suggested that icanhazcheeseburger and pictures of cats on the internet are a symptom of mass infection of people with toxoplasmosis and that people who are infected are more likely to give comfort to crying cats which have learned, or had their behavior modified by the parasite, to mimic the cries of human babies. If anyone can find me this presentation I’d be grateful. I fear a pro-cat conspiracy drove this video off the internet.
- pvaldes 5y ago> Is some company creating 'product' for this and needs some marketing? That would be my first candidate, yep. A problem with this is the disconnection between effect and cause. The startup could be lying to themselves and entering in a greyhound race trying to develop a solution for a problem that was not the problem that they though it was. There is a risk that the final product will have a really short life (and makers hate to be told that). "Ozone machines against Covid" came to my mind for example. Blind faith towards bad (or biased) science is a problem. Is like discovering that people drunk with severe headache drive reckless and are more prone to have accidents at work and "all had drive licenses", and concluding that "people with drive licenses are worse drivers than people without; we have another publication". Sorry, but this is not "creature is mind-controlling me", is "my brain is on fire" (and my experiment design could be better). In the experiment the hyaena cubs supposedly move closer to lions. Maybe the cubs are just uncomfortable and trying to find a relief instead to defying lions?. Are the same ill cubs moving more far away from lions also?. I would want to see the Standard deviation for distances, and a control group in the articles related with predator urine to discard just an increase in wandering searching for water. Are this cubs moving toward water sources where lions gather? Are this cubs looking for a more shadowed spot where lions rest? This kind of studies precooked to produce the desired answer while ignoring the, more probable, but non publishable and less sexy explanations border pseudosience. Extreme claims require extraordinary solid proofs, not tabloid style management.
- rossdavidh 5y agoFor those who want to read a whole book on the topic of the influence of a variety of parasites on behavior, you might read "This Is Your Brain on Parasites: How Tiny Creatures Manipulate Our Behavior and Shape Society" by Kathleen McAuliffe. It also discusses whether or not there are "parasites" that shape behavior in ways that are beneficial to the host. Also, my GR review of it: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1707114701 https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1707114701
- lifeisstillgood 5y agoI hate the term "mind control". It anthropomorphises these weirdly evolved behaviours. Yes it is gross / weird / unsettling that our minds can be affected in ways they don't notice (wait till we see what humans get up to post 2060) but it is not intentional in the way we understand it. For example we don't think Ebola intentionally causes bodies to necrotise so much they infect everyone around them but that's what happens.
- justshowpost 5y agoThere are more While the neurological reprogramming of complex behavior is well documented even among earthly parasites (see Dicrocoelium; Entomophthora; Holy See; Sacculina; Toxoplasma; others), it should be emphasized ...
- nikolay 5y agoMy speculation is that most of the wars and violence in the world is due to cats... well, toxoplasmosis in people's brains, which came from cats.