Researchers: Wolves Might Slow Spread of CWD

William G. Davis writes "According to this AP article, researchers are now suggesting that wolves might be able to slow the spread of chronic wasting disease (CWD) in deer. Chronic wasting disease is the name commonly given to spongiform encephalopathy (prion disease) in deer and elk (basically, mad cow disease in deer). The article explains how wolves typically look for weaknesses in their prey, and since prion disease causes that, wolves might target the sick animals. One has to wonder, though, about the potential ramifications of having dangerous predators exposed to this brain-wasting illness, and what type of 'unusual behavior' they'll start to exhibit."

Comments

Re:Dangerous?

[jc42]

I'd guess any wolf that began to have symptoms of such a serious disease would simply starve to death in fairly short order

True. And there's lots of literature supporting the idea that predators and scavengers tend to have very good defenses against the diseases that affect their prey. Part of the defenses are powerful digestive systems that leave few cells intact and chop up most proteins and DNA into small pieces. They also have some of the best immune systems on the planet.

The explanation is fairly simple. If you're a predator or scavenger, you often eat food that was weakened or killed by disease. This puts strong selective pressure on your species in favor of defenses against those diseases.

I've read a couple of articles on the semi-exception that the top predator on the planet (Homo sap) seems to be a partial exception. This is generally explained as an artifact of our recent conversion to predation. We do have some predator adaptations, but we haven't had time to evolve them fully.

There is a bit of debate about this, though. For example, studies of wild chimp populations haved turned up data showing that they actually do get a significant part of their protein by eating small animals. So our predatory ancestry probably goes back at least 5 million years. But still, we are primates, and it wasn't all that long ago that our ancestors were vegetarians.