Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Parasite gives wolves what it takes to be pack leaders

nature.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 189 posts

Re: Parasite gives wolves what it takes to be pack leaders

#151

Post by Kiboneu »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #146
ShamelessC wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably a good idea to critique the paper, not the press release. I haven't read it but for all you know they could have discussed this at length.

They discuss it briefly and it turns out the above commenter is 100% correct in his assessment. Relevant quote from the paper: >Given the correlational nature of the study, observed patterns may not be causal; for example, higher risk-takers could be more likely to be both entrepreneurial and exposed to T. gondii [...], thereby driving the correlation. Remember that while it might sound amazing that a parasite could…

> there is no practicable mechanism suggested so far

There is, actually. T. Gondii has the genes to make tyrosine hydroxylase which is a dopamine precursor. It also visibly modifies rodent behavior around cat urine. Robert Sapolsky is one of many researchers narrowing in a mechanistic model of how parasites can influence host behavior.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17404235/ https://www.edge.org/conversation/robert_sapolsky-toxo

Edit:

Steering higher-order behavior by modifying reward circuits is possible and overtly practiced in many types of (mostly superficial) human relationships, organizational interfaces and societal structures.

Re: Parasite gives wolves what it takes to be pack leaders

#152

Post by periheli0n »

psychphysic wrote: post #127
Kiboneu wrote: post #82

It’s impressive to see T. Gondii evolve to influence their hosts to write positive PR. Joking aside, it makes sense to me that higher risk behavior on the host’s part would increase a parasite’s spread, since some of the energy that drives risk also increases the rate of physical interaction with the world; like a free roaming particle with a lot of momentum on a substrate. It is good to see more research looking int…

Ha! It's good research but there is a major caveat I didn't see it in this press release. Before they answer questions like yours they need to have tracked when infection occured. Simple conundrum are wolves who are infected with t. Gondii more likely to leave their pack? Or are wolves that leave their pack more likely to get infected? Similarly for pack leaders. It might seem obtuse to ask for this but it is importa…

Why do press releases always have to oversell the findings? I think it plays into the hands of science deniers.

I can see how press departments could claim that they’re only doing their job, but it’s potentially unethical and dangerous.

Re: Parasite gives wolves what it takes to be pack leaders

#153

Post by bena »

jesushax wrote: post #130
bena wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Age, socio-economic status, and other confounding factors. Not to mention, according to him, 40% is "barely".

He probably didn't have the stat off the top of his head, so it was exaggerated based on assumptions. But the underlying intuition had a kernel of truth and applies to any political party, or any institution, really. For example, if an organization dedicated to the poor mainly draws support from poor people, they have a kind of incentive to subtly maintain poverty. This theory that institutions kind of have a tendenc…

thaumasiotes was saying married people vote Republican more often. pfisch was suggesting he was actually witnessing a separate correlation. Older people tend to vote Republican more often, older people are more often married than younger people.

I was suggesting that there are other things that go into even the age issue.

Religious people are more likely to marry than non-religious people. Religious people tend to vote more conservatively than non-religious people. Etc. etc. I was agreeing with pfisch that a lot of the reasons people get married often line up with reasons why people vote Republican.

And I wouldn't say the Catholic Church believes its mission to be to eliminate poverty. Or even alleviate it. They want to temporarily alleviate the superficial effects of poverty on people.

Re: Parasite gives wolves what it takes to be pack leaders

#155

Post by californiadreem »

californiadreem wrote: post #38
machina_ex_deus wrote: post #3

Imagine how dystopian that would sound in humans, like some science fiction horror. "All the leaders are secretly infected by parasites". Sounds like interesting sci fi movie premise.

"There's a secret cabal of beings that are making my life personally miserable" is already a common enough position that cyclically occurs in human history every hundred years or so that I don't think it's a fiction. I don't think it's an untenable premise to suspect that toxoplasmosis pandemics are cyclically-occuring in humans already and are responsible for revolutionary periods and/or imperialism. What people mig…

The Article:

> Wolves infected with a common parasite are more likely than uninfected animals to lead a pack, according to an analysis of more than 200 North American wolves1. Infected animals are also more likely to leave their home packs and strike out on their own.

From Wikipedia, Toxoplasmosis Gondii ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii ):

> Although under-studied, penguin populations, especially those that share an environment with the human population, are at-risk due to parasite infections, mainly Toxoplasmosis gondii. The main subspecies of penguins found to be infected by T. gondii include wild Magellanic and Galapagos penguins, as well as blue and African penguins in captivity.[78] In one study, 57 (43.2%) of 132 serum samples of Magellanic penguins were found to have T. gondii. The island that the penguin is located, Magdalena Island, is known to have no cat populations, but a very frequent human population, indicating the possibility of transmission.

From Werner Herzog's Encounters at the End of the Earth ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7kdDeGXUjI ):

  HERZOG: Dr. Ainley, is there such thing as insanity among penguins? I try to 
  avoid the definition of insanity or derangement. I don't mean that a penguin
  might believe he or she is Lenin or Napoleon Bonaparte, but could they just go 
  crazy because they've had enough of their colony?

  AINLEY: Well, I've never seen a penguin bashing its head against a rock. They 
  do get disoriented. They end up in places they shouldn't be, a long way from 
  the ocean.

  HERZOG: These penguins are all heading to the open water to the right.
  But one of them caught our eye, the one in the center.
  He would neither go towards the feeding grounds at the edge of the ice,
  nor return to the colony. Shortly afterwards, we saw him heading straight 
  towards the mountains, some 70 kilometers away. Dr. Ainley explained
  that even if he caught him and brought him back to the colony, he would 
  immediately head right back for the mountains. But why?

  One of these disoriented, or deranged, penguins showed up at the New Harbor 
  diving camp, already some 80 kilometers away from where it should be.
  
  The rules for the humans are do not disturb or hold up the penguin. Stand still 
  and let him go on his way. And here, he's heading off into the interior of the 
  vast continent.

  With 5, 000 kilometers ahead of him, he's heading towards certain death.

Re: Parasite gives wolves what it takes to be pack leaders

#156

Post by ajmurmann »

msrenee wrote: post #150
ajmurmann wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely don't have a clear answer here either. It's just a interesting thing to think about. It's very common and can change you or your loved ones personality. However, reviving it of course would also changed your personality. I've noticed recently that I've gotten much more risk-averse than I used to be and think it might be bad. Maybe I should get toxoplasmosis on purpose? Really creates a lot of questions a…

If T. gondii has you questioning the existence of free will, you should (or maybe shouldn't) look into how your gut microbiota affect your mental processes. We're less individuals and more systems of millions of different critters.

Thanks! I've already down that and many similar rabbit holes and am entirely puzzled about self, sentients and existence :)

Re: Parasite gives wolves what it takes to be pack leaders

#157

Post by novosel »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #45
tgv wrote: post #11

I don't see anything in that article that makes the conclusion inevitable. It's a remarkable correlation for sure, but unfortunately it doesn't go beyond that. There's no pathway from infection to leadership (just a vague hypothesis that doesn't resemble the mechanism in rats and hyenas), and it doesn't look as if they looked at uninfected pack leaders. Perhaps pack leaders or strays eat more dead cat, or some other…

I haven't read the paper either, but I must say the operation of parasites as elements in complex biological super-systems is absolutely fascinating. Ants that march to the top of trees under the influence of fungus spores trying to be eaten by birds. Fish that commit suicide by swimming toward predators as part of a parasitic lifecycle.... evolution is truly miraculous. Another apocryphal story is cats carrying Toxo…

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31980266/

Re: Parasite gives wolves what it takes to be pack leaders

#158

Post by wpietri »

shkkmo wrote: post #131
wpietri wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they were suggesting that causality could run the other way.

That wild cats infected humans so that humans would develope agriculture that would attract rodents for the cats to eat? That hypothesis doesn't seem very plausible...

That civilization bootstrapped due to brain chemistry changes via human/cat association.

Re: Parasite gives wolves what it takes to be pack leaders

#159

Post by the_af »

Trouble_007 wrote: post #142
the_af wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same news, reported in two different places.

I reiterate; Toxoplasma gondii : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii Risk factors for human infection : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#Immune_respo...

Before, you linked to another article about wolves which was basically the same article that is linked at the top of this thread.

So "also, Grey Wolves" -- the "also" is redundant, since it's about the same wolves both times, and the finding is the same.

Re: Parasite gives wolves what it takes to be pack leaders

#160

Post by thaumasiotes »

bena wrote: post #125
pfisch wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know you're not just catching cross correlation with age?

Age, socio-economic status, and other confounding factors. Not to mention, according to him, 40% is "barely".

> Not to mention, according to him, 40% is "barely".

You might want to think about what a 20-point margin means in electoral politics. Taking 60% of the vote is routinely described in terms like "landslide victory".

Post reply on HN