4 ms·
When are we going to accept that we are just a life support system for a bacterial colony?
by nzgrover 4y ago
When are we going to accept that we are just a life support system for a bacterial colony?
- lr4444lr 4y agoThen why didn't they stop up from developing antibiotics?
- thatguy0900 4y agoHave to sacrifice some of the colony so the host doesn't die. Previously they would have been wiped out by the invading bacteria army anyway
- putlake 4y agoBecause there are different types of bacteria that are vying for domination. The "good" bacteria are fine with antibiotics because they usually only get used when there are too many "harmful" bacteria that threaten the life support system.
- patkai 4y agoSome say it's a symbiosis
- epistasis 4y agoThe bacteria developed antibiotics! We just took them from the bacteria.
- ephbit 4y agoWasn't it mostly fungi where humans found antibiotics?
- epistasis 4y agoPenicillin did, but I think a lot of the newer ones were derived from bacteria. But doing a quick web search right now I'm mostly getting potential new antibiotics that came from bacteria, rather than proven antibiotics, so now I'm wondering about the actual bacterial contribution...
- xhkkffbf 4y agoAlso trees are just farming us to create the CO2 that they crave. It's dangerous to look at the world with a human-first lens.
- froidpink 4y agoAlso dogs at some point decided they'd stop looking for food themselves and instead focus on taking advantage of how insanely industrious humans are
- bohmerforever 4y agoAnd wheat domesticated us, not the other way around.
- budu3 4y agoThis sounds like the premise for a good zombie movie.
- jjtheblunt 4y agoAliens movies are similar!
- lob_it 4y agoI guess skynet is just another "Johnny come lately", late to the party and not biologically diverse enough to be original :) Funniest comment tree I've read all day. Faith in humanity restored from a floppy :p
- blamarvt 4y agoI mean, if you dig a bit deeper you'll find all life is just elaborate Rube Goldberg machines comprised of chemical interactions.
- chippy 4y agoGiven that there are organisms that can literally effect human and animal behavior, in a way the system itself is partly controlled by the organisms inside it. The big ones are toxoplasma, rabies, etc but there's a theory that many viruses and bacteria seek to control the behaviour of the host to enable successful spread. Perhaps flu makes people more social before they get too ill? Perhaps some sexually transmitted diseases change behaviour to make the host more promiscuous? Almost impossible to perform any studies on humans, but for fish...
- ispo 4y agoWe are a system with them, instead.