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Parasites That Can Control Insect Minds
Ant writes to tell us that NewScientist is running an article about an interesting parasite that apparently has the power to 'brainwash' its host. From the article: "The parasitic Nematomorph hairworm (Spinochordodes tellinii) develops inside land-dwelling grasshoppers and crickets until the time comes for the worm to transform into an aquatic adult. Somehow mature hairworms brainwash their hosts into behaving in way they never usually would - causing them to seek out and plunge into water."
eeewwwww yuk!
Maybe that is what is wrong with my head.
This could explain George W. Bush...
Here you go.
Kind of reminds you of the plot of an old Sci-fi movie doens't it?
"You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm." - S. G. Colette
Fortunately, those parasites are only found on Seti Alpha V.
Freaky. I just hope those critters don't get inside my brain.
So, you got us a link to this story, or am I gonna have to get off my lazy backside and work to find it?
Sorry couldn't help it.
Oh those worms from 'The Wrath of Khan' are real? Well then I hope they're on ebay 'cause I need a couple of these buggers...
An "interested observer", was asked to comment on the ramifications of the mind-controlling insects. The observer simply looked at the reporter and said, "KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!"
Duh!
*De gozaru!*
where is it??
here is the NGC link
Actually, it was quite a struggle! Have you ever seen a kung-fu movie? It was just like that!
Behold the evolution of the Goa'uld!
Apparently it's Khan Day, because I've heard that cry a lot in the comments today.
But, back to the mind-control worms... we've already got one better. It's called Television.
Now we can retire "The dog ate my homework" for something more modern.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
from TFA: the "mechanisms underlying this intriguing parasitic strategy remain poorly understood, generally", [Biron] says.
Why is it that scientists are quick to publish results they don't understand? I'd much rather read about this in six months or a year when they have more details and practical uses.
I wonder if research into the actual control mechanism can lead to a treatment for people with major pychological problems. Maybe there is a protein component to OCD that can be blocked.
the Lemming Effect. :)
And yes, very creepy. Presumably, if the critters alreayd have an instinct to avoid water, this creature just has to reverse it. Still. Ick!
Michael J. Bertrand, AKA Fruvous or FruFox My
I mean come on, how complex is a grasshoppers brain?
To-Do List:
Jump
Sing
Jump some more
Jump
Play a violin for the whole damn summer and starve to death in the winter.
...our new mind controlling parasites How long until they form a political party?
\u262D = \u5350
We call these things "politicians".
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Now I know why.
I know the juvenile nematomorphs are supposed to only parasitize insects and the adults are free living, but I wonder if they had any effect on the reptiles that ingested the crickets? Reptiles are difficult enough to keep without worrying about some sub-clinical infection or infestation.
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
VERY scary, very science fiction. What if this happened to people, but the behavior was at least passable, until it was 'too late'?
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Oh this was supposed to be a political joke. lawl.
That is just incredible, especially when you think about the fact that it is able to control multiple species. Wow. It would be very interesting to see if other species not as closely related would behave in the same way, various beetles, for instance.
For those who remember the old days.
http://freedroid.sourceforge.net/ for you younger people!
Basically, a parasite in cats passes to humans and a research study revealed that...f ected-your-brain-yet.html
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"...women infected with toxoplasma spent more money on clothes and were consistently rated as more attractive. "We found they were more easy-going, more warm-hearted, had more friends and cared more about how they looked," he said. "However, they were also less trustworthy and had more relationships with men." "By contrast, the infected men appeared to suffer from the "alley cat" effect: becoming less well groomed undesirable loners who were more willing to fight. They were more likely to be suspicious and jealous. "They tended to dislike following rules," Flegr said."
Here's the first link I could find that refers to the story I first read in the UK Times a while back (the link to the Times in the blog is broken but the best bit of the Times story was some suggestion that this parasite might explain the behaviour of the cat-loving French): http://althouse.blogspot.com/2005/06/have-cats-af
and another to the Guardian (UK) on a similar vein: http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/thisweek/story/0,1
CATS MUST BE STOPPED!
Just use your imagination. Nothing like a system that works by burrowing into your head and making you not want to copy... or want to vote for a specific candidate. I'd use my trained worms on my interviewers to get top salary.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
A similar thing occurs with wasp larvae and spiders. The spider basically flips out under the control of the larva's venom and spins a web unlike anything it would normal have spun but which has a little protective pouch. The spider would then go into the pouch and wait until the larva kills it at which point it would be eaten. Here's a link to the abstract at nature.com for anybody who has a subscription there.
-Pinkoir
Take a look at all the lobbyists and politicians in Washington DC.
You decide who is the insect and who is the parasite.
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
In a press release today, Google announced that it will be shipping a new brain implant nano-probe that will take control of your consciousness. From Google's press release "Are you tired of going to work 9 to 5, day in day out? You're in luck, with Braintop technology, you won't have to endure the tedium of daily life anymore. With a simple dial you can set the number of hours you would like to be controlled, and then just click on the autopilot button to wake up 8 hours later, when your workshift is done!"
Can I preorder?
There are some species of fungus that attack insects and change the behavior of the victim. The last dying act of the host is to climb to the top of the nearest grass/plant stem bite down on the stem with a death grip and die there. The fungus then sprouts from the body (it looks attractive in a creepy sort of way) . The perch provides a good place for the fungus to disperse its spores.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
This kinda reminds me of the old "Animorphs" book series. They had the Yeerks, who were parasitic gray slugs that could read and control the minds of their hosts.
I hope this means I get morphing powers to defeat these parasites....
Remember, open source is free as in speech, not free as in bear.
"Ant writes" how can we be sure he wasn't brainwashed too? :)
It's quite common for parasites to change a host's behaviour. There are parasites which change the behaviour of their human hosts.
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e.g.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/thisweek/story/0,1
There are others.
Deleted
They just stole it from Resident Evil 4! :-p
"To face death, that's nothing much. But to feel really stupid when you die, well, that would be insufferable."
There is a parasitic wasp that paralyzes and lays a larva on a certain kind of spider. The larva survives by feeding off the fluids of the spider. When it comes time to mature, the larva induces a spider to spin a different kind of web that better supports the wasp cocoon. It then, of course, consumes the spider.
I remember a story that came out a few years ago about a crab parasite that would attach to a crabs genitals, sterilize it, and then secrete hormones that would make the crab think it was a female fanning it's eggs. ( But the crab would be nurturning the parasite instead. ) Here's a link to a short essay that's full of more examples: http://www2.nau.edu/~bah/BIO471/Reader/Sapolsky_20 03.pdf
I posted this on my ant message board as well in this thread. It has more comments.
Ants have parasites as well according to this thread/discussion : "There is a parasite that cause behavioural change in ants. It's called lancet fluke. The parasitized ants become "ant zombies". They're influenced to cling to grass, until eventually eaten by herbivores. I sometimes find decapitated ant heads clinging to grasses. These may well be such cases."
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
... is a flatworm living in ants and cows. To move from ant to cow, it makes the ant climb a grass stem and wait there to be eaten by a cow.t t.html
Here's a link I found:
http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v5/psyche-5-33-sco
From the site:
"As a striking example of how intricate complicit phenomena can be, the authors cite a parasitic flatworm that spends part of its life inside an ant, while its reproductive stage is inside a cow. The technique that nature has evolved to allow the worm to transfer from one animal to the other is described as follows.
The parasite infects the ant, and presses on a particular part of its brain. This interferes with the normal behavior of the brain, which causes the ant to climb a grass stem, grasp it with its jaws, and hang there, permanently attached. So when a cow comes along and eats the grass, the parasite enters the cow. "
The Lancet Liver Fluke, Dicrocoelium dendriticum behaves in a similarly creepy way. It starts out infecting snails. When it infects them, the flukes mature for a while, then at a certain point they cause the snail to expel slime balls containing the flukes. The slime balls are eaten by ants. The fluke infects the ants, and change their behavior, causing them to behave normally until evening sets in, when they climb to the top of grasses and clamp on to the leaf with their mandibles, causing a higher lileihood of cows eating them. They then migrate to the liver of the cow, where they live until they deposit eggs, which are pooped out and eaten by snails starting the whole cycle again.
Hyperbole is the worst thing ever.
Chekov: "Oh, sir, it was Khan! We picked him up on Ceti Alpha Five... He put... creatures... in our bodies... to control our minds. He must us... say lies... do things. He thought he controlled us, but he did not. The Captain was strong."
from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
--
make install -not war
This is ancient. Parasite Rex came out four years ago, received extensive media coverage (I heard about in on NPR), and describes many examples like this. What's news for you isn't necessarily news for nerds.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
Scientists have known about this forever, they're called WOMEN.
I few examples of this were discussed in The Selfish Gene. Its not the parasite that's self but its genes or so goes the thesis.
The worm has a home page...
http://www.democrats.org/
-my inner racer is pointing at him and laughing.-
They are called "Wives" and they have a multitude of political and social organizations.
I'm guessing the scientists who authored the study were all single?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I, for one, welcome our brainwashing overlords!
Unraveling this one may require Spock's scientific genius.
The article is long on conjecture and short on fact. It may be, for instance, that the parasite commandeers the host's motor functions and drives the host to haphazardly hop until, on occassion, it lands in water.
I doubt even the behaviour of Drosophila Melanogaster, one of the most studied organisms, is known well enough to allow prediction of the exact neurotransmitters that would, say, turn it off eating fruit.
To suggest that a parasite could hijack it's host with such exquisite direction begs endless questions.
Could the parasite and host have co-evolved?
Most likely the Intelligent Designer, tired of playing pin the tail on the bacterium, fashioned this parasite to tease us on our way to renouncing Evolution.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
branwashing? is this committed by a cereal killer?
It's been known for years, if not decades, that parasites can influence their hosts' behavior to the benefit of the parasite. There are flukes (genus Leucochloridium)with a life cycle that involves being transmitted from snails to other animals—the fluke affects the snail's brain and causes the snail to become light-seeking rather than light-avoiding, which means the snails climb to the tops of plants, where they are easy prey for birds—the next host in the fluke's life cycle. More about that (and the evolutionary logic behind it) here. Another fluke has a similar life cycle involving ants, which it drives to the tops of grass blades where they can be eaten by sheep (which again become its next hosts).
A more obvious example might be rabies—animals with rabies ("mad dogs", most famously) have an irrational tendency to attack and bite other animals, unprovoked—which is how rabies is spread.
I remember this movie. It was an 80's B or C movie, called "The Stuff"... It was a really good tasting whipped-cream looking dessert, and it consumed you from the inside out. A type of mold or something that crashed in a meteor from outer space, and it was mined fron the crater. The mold could wear your body and use your brain until it decides to leave. Icky.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
Where can I get some of these parasites? It'd be nice to brainwash more geeks to dive into water every so often.
This is mentioned in a chapter intro in the book "Figments of Reality: The Evolution of the Curious Mind", by Ian Stewart & Jack Cohen.
I can't recommend that book enough.
Somehow mature hairworms brainwash their hosts into behaving in way they never usually would - causing them to seek out and plunge into water.
Man, I loved lemmings.
Though it was equally fun to simply make them go *pop*.
-Adam
If this isn't a sign of intelligent design behind live the universe and everything, what is? ;)
The riddle is solved. The worm sprays some sambal-like substance into the grasshopper's mouth.
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
I thought this story was about Microsoft....and no I didn't RTFA.
3001, at the latest:
Woman: We favour unreasonably huge subsidies to the Brain Slug Planet.
Fry: Ok, but what are the Brain Slugs who control you gonna do for the working man?
Woman: Attach Brain Slugs to them.
From TFA you quote (right after your quote, no less)
Now Biron and his colleagues have shown that the worm brainwashes the grasshopper by producing proteins which directly and indirectly affect the grasshopper's central nervous system.
Ignorance is not a crime; neither should it be a way of life
Congress control $ = inmates run the asylum
There's a parasite that does similar things to snails. It makes the snails move to exposed places where they are visible to birds, get eaten, and the parasite gets distributed by bird excrement. Aditionally, the worm pulsating inside the eye stalk looks really gross.
...drives humans to water for pain relief- not exactly mind control, but the same result:
from Guinea Worm Disease Facts...
What are the signs and symptoms of Guinea worm disease?
A few days to hours before the worm emerges, the person might develop a fever and have swelling and pain in the area where the worm is. A blister develops and then opens into a wound. When the wound is immersed in water, the worm begins to emerge. Most worms appear on the legs and feet, but they can occur anywhere on the body. After the worm emerges, the wound often becomes painfully swollen and infected.
http://www.astdhpphe.org/infect/guinea.html
Guinea Worm Disease Facts
Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
They have been playing res 1 and especialy 4 far to much
As noted in the article, there is a http://www.canal.ird.fr/programmes/recherches/gril lons/">video about these parasites.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I was the first to discover a parasite that brainwashed the mind of its host when I got married.
Found another interesting example, a parasite ( Toxoplasma gondii ) that infects cats and rats—rats are infected by eating cat feces, then the parasite affects their brains to make them less fearful, and more likely to be eaten by cats. Toxoplasma can have neurological effects in humans, too (especially those with weakened immune systems), though fortunately people tend not to get eaten by cats.
http://www.cnrs.fr/Cnrspresse/Archives/n347a2.html
p df) from July 2002 explainig how this research we just learned from came to be......
s ite/dicrocoelium.html
Paper is dated from 1997, so it's not such a news item.
You can also peruse the full pdf (http://www.cnrs.fr/Cnrspresse/n403/pdf/n403rd09.
As far as parasistic behaviour go, I have a peculiar liking for "La petite Douve du Foie" :
Dicrocoelium dendriticum (the lancet liver fluke)
"Dicrocoelium dendriticum is called the lancet liver fluke because of its characteristic shape. Unlike most other digenetic trematodes whose life cycles involve aquatic or marine hosts, the life cycle of this parasite is completely terrestrial involving a terrestrial snail as the first intermediate host and an ant as the second intermediate host. The definitive host, which includes sheep, cattle, goats, pigs, and humans (rarely), is infected when it ingests ants that are infected with metacercariae (view diagram of the life cycle). In the definitive host the parasite migrates into the bile duct and causes pathology similar to that caused by Clonorchis sinensis. This parasite is distributed throughout much of Europe and Asia, and it is also found in parts of North America and Australia."http://www.biosci.ohio-state.edu/~para
What is most interesting with Dicrocoelium dendriticum is that it hijacks the ant and make it climb on grass during full daylight and hold tight with it's mandible so it has a greatest chance of being eaten by a passing sheep - quite un-ant like..
if the ant is not successfull in its "suicide" it will do the same thing day after day until the larva dies or it is eaten...
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
It's not a new, there has been this kind of parasits around for some time now...
Eating late lunch and typing don't mix well!
As noted in the article, there is a video about these parasites.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
...that I for one welcome our new worm overlords.
Now I'm off for a bath.
Sorry, I was wrong on that one...more explaination here :
n driticum_is_a_bi.htm
http://workforce.cup.edu/buckelew/dicrocoelium_de
"Dicrocoelium dendriticum is a bile duct fluke of ruminants such as sheep, goats and deer as well as pigs. It is often referred to as the lancet fluke because of its blade-like form. It stands apart from most trematodes since it has a land-based life cycle. The definitive host's feces contain contain miracidia which do not hatch until after they are eaten by the first intermediate host, a land snail, such as Cionella lubrica in the U. S. and other species elsewhere. The miracidium emerges inside the intestine of the snail and metamorphoses into a sporocyst in the digestive gland. Daughter sporocysts are produced within the mother sporocyst and in turn produce xiphidiocercaria which are characterized by having a stylet inside the mouth and tails, normal features of aquatic cercaria, despite the fact they terrestrial. After around 90 days post-infection, cercarial production fills the mantle cavity known as the lung of these air-breathing snails. The cercaria irritate the delicate tissues of the lung, resulting in the defensive production of mucous by the snail. The infestation of the lung, causes the snail to cough, expelling mucous, laden with cercaria into its slime trail. As the slime dries, the exterior hardens, protecting the cercaria from dessication. The second intermediate host is the common brown ant, Formica fusca in North America. The ants gather the slime balls containing cercaria and feed it to their developing larvae. Metacercaria develop in the hemocoel of the ant and are infective to any definitive host which may accidentally ingest ants while grazing. One or two of the encysted metacercaria encyst in the subesophageal ganglion, one portion of the ant brain, and there, remarkably alter the ant's behavior, increasing its chances of being eaten by the definitive host. Ants normally retreat to their burrows as the day cools in the late afternoon to evening and remain there till mid-day when the surface of the soil warms. However, infected ants climb to the ends of blades of grass, clinging by their mandibles, during periods of cool when their hivemates have retreated to their burrows. The consequences of this antithetical behavior is that the ant becomes a prime target of accidental predation by the grazer. Upon ingestion by the definitive host, the metacercaria excyst in the duodenum and migrate up the common bile duct to the liver. The adult fluke matures in 6-7 weeks, producing egg capsules about a month later. "
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
And here is a picture of one.
Rabbies spreads itself by making the infected animal irritable and mad, causing it to bite every animal it encounters, spreading the virus. Humans can get rabbies also, but I don't know if it makes them bite or merely into screaming punching maniacs.
Table-ized A.I.
The author from Animorphs was right! There MUST BE Yeerks, the things that are trying to take over humans!
Student Research and Development
and now they are creating the zerg. At least I'm prepared! black sheep wall power overwhelming I'm ready to take out the overmind. wait, I need some music.. radiofreezerg Now I'm ready (it's related to starcraft for those who don't know)
Thanks, videogames!
We've got to geet out of here!
"One of the reasons they are interesting is that parasites are often able to get in there and selectively manipulate behaviour," she told New Scientist. She says the eventual hope is that understanding how parasites manipulate their hosts' behaviour - by affecting the nervous and endocrine systems - might further the understanding of how human behaviour-systems link.
Only science, my ass. "You want to go fight in Iraq, you want to go fight in Iraq, you wa...."
Table-ized A.I.
My favorite part is when Ira Glass asks "whose side are you on?"
The link: http://207.70.82.73/pages/descriptions/03/242.html
Enemy Camp
7/18/03
Episode 242
San Francisco Photographers
Come, join the Brain slug party!
They're called the Goa'ulds.
Parasites that tend to kill their hosts tend to not last very long (in their current evolutionary state). Killing the host produces stronger evolutionary pressure in the host species to find defenses. A mellower strategy of letting the host live after releasing the parasite will reduce the selection pressure against it.
Aids is sometimes considered an "immature" virus because of this. Viruses have a better chance of spreading themselves around if the host lives longer and is not shunned. (Of course, modern medicine changes the picture.)
Table-ized A.I.
As a side note, some of the log entries in Resident Evil 4 reference some of these kind of things.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I don't know if that was sarcasm (I guess it was) and I'm not a proponent of ID, but I find it very odd that such a creature has evolved. The chances of that happening are infinitesimal. Who knows...
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
We call them politicians.
"Judge not..." And now for something completely different...Just thought I'd throw that in for...no reason really. Must've been something I ate. An "undigested bit of beef", perhaps I see more evidence every day that free will is indeed an illusion. "The mind is what the brain does" --Nat Geo, March 2005 issue. It's quoted elsewhere, but that's where I first saw it. So...who's going to be the first to use the "parasite" defense in a murder case? The "twinkie" defense might have some merit after all. Some people do react rather intensly to suger alergies. Maybe all that soda pop you drink could actually make you crazy. Watch out Coca-Cola. There could be a lawsuit coming.
What?
wow
"... corrupts their nervous system ... Then, at the top, the fungus consumes the insect ... What if this happened to people, but the behavior was at least passable, until it was 'too late'?"
It is too late! Microsoft has already done this to millions of Windows users....
Just like a rabid dog behaves in the unusual way of biting everyone so that the disease can spread? The mechanism in grasshopers is just unknown, but this isn't *amazing* at all.
Hell, just as a parasitic amoeba makes me shit like I never before, so that they can leave my body and spread to another host... Slashdot news!!!
Alright, who let one through the Stargate?
crotchfruit parasites control human hosts by various brain chemicals. For example, the sight of a smiling infant crotchfruit parasite will cause the brain of the human adult host to secrete beta endorphins, an opiate analog,
Also, the appearance of crotchfruit in a mating pair of adult human hosts will cause the parents to work harder and faster. The female adult human host's brain become more efficient. The male host becomes a harder worker and will seek to prove himself a "good father" for the crotchfruit parasites.
The exact nature of the mix of brain chemicals that are manipulated by the crotchfruit is yet unknown. Furthermore, the human adult society seems to avoid any knowledge of how the crotchfruit biologically manipulate the human hosts. Alas, the human animal, althoough possessed of a potentially powerful rational facility, is unable to apply these rational faculties in certain "taboo areas" (e.g., the birth-life-death cycle, etc).
eat shiat and bark at the moon
It's interesteding that everyone remembers the mind control parasites from "Star Trek II", but no one has mentioned the Goa'uld yet.
Am I the only one for whom Richard Dawkins' "Extended Phenotype" immediately came to mind? I have a feeling he will be thrilled to hear this - this is exactly what his theory is about (genes' phenotypes include their effects on non-living things around them and other organisms). Cool beans.
-Rob
Kinda sounds like the basis for a Science Fiction TV show doesn't it? Where parasitic creatures get into the brain of another and they do things they wouldn't ordinarily do? Oh yeah... Stargate SG-1... they did that already... hrm.
There are viruses that have strange effects on our own psychology, such as Rabies.
Rabies can cause hydrophobia, which means people or animals infected with it develop a fear of water and an inability to swallow liquids without great difficulty (hence lots of drooling). In animals this often causes death by dehydration.
Diahrea makes me thirsty. I lose my appetite when I get a stomach flu.
Are these controlling my mind?
Spock's Brain (shudder)... but I wouldn't mind the wake-up-and-your-work-is-done thingy.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
... is the most fucked-up thing I have ever read.
Wow.
That is all.
Futurama anyone?
-- All Gods were immortal.
-- S. Lem
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Steve Balmer announced today that Microsoft plans to utilize this "highly innovative" biological computer to further enhance Microsoft's products. They plan on adding this state-of-the-art, innovative, bio-computer to their version of the "Cell" processor planned to be used in their next generation game console.
The modified "cell" computer will target the slashdotus-fanus section of the human brain to further innovate the gaming experience, especially for slashdot users that also play games on the X-box. The bio-computer will also suppress the userus-linuxus section of the human brain, further encouraging the microshaftus-orfus cortex. According to Balmer, this new "cell" processor will double microsoft's bottom line in 2006.
1) Find grasshoppers and/or crickets randomly plunging to their watery graves.
2) Show some friends and explain why they're doing it. Bet them money when they don't believe it.
3) Show them the newscientist article on this.
4) Profit!!!!!!
pseudo-mod: "+1 Funny"
This is interesting. I can't tell if it's real or not. Thank you for casting doubt on it though, I think that's generally a healthy thing to do.
So far, all I can say for sure is:
1) the name "Jurassic Technology" sounds really, really strange/kind of fishy
2) the bit about the ant "screaming" seems wrong, and the overall description seems sloppy
3) the paragraphs of text about the rainforest (on their website) seem like bland, soulless propaganda devoid of real content.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
Our next mission is to the brain slug planet, where we will be walking around randomly, without any hats.
For the swarm!
Sure it's no big deal, unless you're dealing with a pregnant woman and then the consequences for the fetus are really fucking scary. Congenital toxoplasmosis isn't as bad as some birth defects and in-utero diseases, but it's up there.
This is why my dad always made sure that emptying the litterboxes was one of my sisters' jobs when they were around so that they'd be exposed, get past it, and develop an immunity.
Trippy. Always pictured a predatory creature like alien and never think about something small like fungus or bacteria.
Guess a fungus stalking Sigourney Weaver in her underwear doesn't have quite the viseral appeal of a human-crunching xenomorph.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
LIke how women have often made me seek out and plunge into debt!?
I'm so very happy that Slashdot dosn't support embedding images in comments right now.
(ewww)
I think what the poster was saying. All the viruses that didn't produce phlegm and get expelled, died off.
Would y'all give me a damn minute!
http://www.khaaan.com/
A sort of wasp which catches a spider and attaches larve onti it. Larve chemically influences the spider (at the same time eating his 'blood'), so he stops eating and starts producing a "shell" for larvas metamorphosis instead of making it's own web. After some time spider collapses, but he did his job.
Jesus... Am I the only one here that still plays Half-Life? I knew about this the first time I saw a headcrab!
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan tells a similar tale. Actually there are a few tales of how bacteria, viruses and parasites affect behavior. The reason for these behavior changes is mainly something the host is doing on their own - but only by doing something, like sneezing, can the "infection" spread. Over millions of years these things have worked out ways to use even our own defenses against us.
Sagan and Druyan tell a small story of ants who are infected with a parasite and also climb up a blade of grass or whatever high spot they can find. However, their claim isn't that ants are being infected by fungi - they are being controlled by an actual parasite. When they get into the host ants, the ants are being told somehow to go up. They try to explain that an ant actually doesn't do a lot of "thinking" so it's as easy as pulling the right strings and stimulating the right nerves.
Once the infected, brain dead ant reaches the top of a blade grass it just waits. Then suddenly the grass is eaten by a small herbivore, maybe a boar, and the parasite is pased onto a larger animal - the one it's been trying to infect the whole time. Ants are just easy to control, move fast and stay pretty undetected. Good choice for transportation.
I can't really believe that I'm the only one who has read this book here at Slashdot. Well, barely related but interesting: Ants, Mushroom and Mold: An Evolutionary Arms Race By NICHOLAS WADE.
And BTW; Support bacteria, it's the only culture some people have!
Get your Unix fortune now!
Directly or indirectly, a lot of things change the behaviour of their host. Rabies is a pretty dramatic example. Even the common cold does a pretty good job of getting us to cough it out in public.
> It's interesteding that everyone remembers the mind control parasites
> from "Star Trek II", but no one has mentioned the Goa'uld yet.
There are a handful of reasons for this.
Probably the most important reason is that STII:TWOK is almost certainly the best of all the Star Trek movies (or, at least, all the ones that have Shatner in them). Not that it's perfect or anything, but it's actually quite a solid movie in many respects. Additionally, scene with the critter in question is easily one of the three most famous scenes in the movie (the other two probably being when Kirk yells "Kahn!" and the scene at the end containing the line "His pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking").
A second reason is that Star Trek is, in sci-fi, the *most* legendary franchise in terms of the abject fanaticism of such large numbers of fans. The reason for this, in my opinion, probably stems largely from the timing of its introduction -- when Star Trek debuted, the *best* television sci-fi up to that point was probably Doctor Who, which if you've ever seen it, is actually in a number of ways rather less well executed than Star Trek. (Note to Dr. Who fans: I don't want to get into a flamewar about this, and note that I said "in a number of ways", not "in all ways", and also please note that I called Dr. Who the best televised sci-fi up to that time.) When you look at sci-fi television from that era, there was a lot of utterly bogus zero-budget poorly-written, poorly-acted virtually-plotless stuff with few developed characters, a lot of real junk predicated on the assumption that one interesting sci-fi concept (e.g., Martians' blowing up the Earth to make room in its former orbit for Mars) was in and of itself enough interesting material for an entire series. (Yes, that was a real example, and Leonard Nimoy played one of the Martians. It was called, I kid you not, Zombies of the Stratosphere.) Sci-fi fans were *starved* for decent sci-fi television, and Star Trek stepped into that void. So it's got a rather large and devoted following. No other sci-fi series gets more people wearing ridiculous costumes, makeup, fake ears, and forehead ridges, spending hours reading starship technical manuals, and so on and so forth, than Star Trek.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Or it will torment the cat using various tricks, tripwires, and other items. In rare cases, it will even involve other members of its genus (i.e. "country cousins"). Cf. "Anvils and ironing boards in the rodent-cat dialectic", authors Tom and Jerry.
In rare cases, the cat becomes immune to death, so that the rodent can torture it indefinitely (e.g. "Amateur surgery at Mouse Hospital" by Dr. Itchy).
they've been doing that on Stargate for the past nine seasons
Why don't STDs ever do this? Instead of rotting someone's liver or whatever, why isnt' there a sexually transmitted disease which ups people's testosterone and makes them really horney?
Or is there...
There are ton of supposedly harmless viruses and bacteria that have yet to be catagorized. It'd be interesting to see if any of them had this effect.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
So it's kind of like religion, huh?
"Insect Minds That Control Parasites" such as Steve Balmer and Microsoft.
Hypnogerms anyone?
- Aetheral Research -
...on Bill Gates! Sorry, couldn't resist :).
Sometimes I comment just to hear myself typing.
Ewald's book "The Evolution of Infectious Diseases" describes how pathogens ( particularly single strain airborne pathogens which can only propagate in a host for a few days or weeks before the host becomes immune) often evolve to manipulate host defenses in such a way that the host gets what it wants (self defense) and the disease gets what it wants (transmission to a new host.)
This dynamic changes, however, with fluid borne pathogens where multiple strains are transmitted at once, and it's this latter case that Ewald focuses on the most.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
for the best in no-crabs diets, the South Bronx Paradise kicks freakin ass baby!
But if you feel like crawlin on the ceiling and eatin bugs, just go with it....
Odd ... I wasn't aware that insects actually possessed "minds". Brains, sure ... but minds?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
It's just the brainwashing in our society is done not by hormones or substances that affect neural transmitters directly. It's done by feeding the wrong information into us and then punishing those that do not agree with it and rewarding those who choose to comply. This system can do amazing things.
If some aliens were to study us they would be amazed how people could be brainwahsed into doing very stupid things like going to war to fight for a foreing country or adopt children of different race etc.
So who is feeding this information? Well I guess that's easy - the "free press". But the realy interesting question is - who is the parasite?
Also sounds like whatever infected our CEO when we paid so sign up for the microsoft partner's program.
Since then we've made more and more bad tech decisions - presumably in the hopes of some preditor that our company can be eaten for a bargain like Sendo was.
I heard about another parasite very impressive, called Fasciola hepatica. It parasites *three species* in its lifecycle.
It parasites first the liver of sheeps or horses, but its eggs can't hatch here. They leave the host with feces. Then the larvae are eaten by snails. They multiply inside and are ejected with mucosities. Ants are attracted by these sorts of white perls. Now that they are adult, they go in the ants's brains, and command it to go at the evening on grasses *that the sheeps prefer*, the ants are eaten by sheeps and the cycle restarts.
The English wikipedia page is not very complete : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasciola_hepatica
Describes this quite nicely in his book >Extended Phenotype.
I don't see any claims in the article that they discovered a new general phenomenon.
They didn't even claim to discover a new specific case.
The article is about the mechanisms involved in this specific case.
Sure, maybe it's news to ScuttleMonkey.
Your examples are still welcome tho.
First rule of news forums: pick on any attribute of an article to declare the article old news.
Well, maybe not first rule. Second? Hm, 5th? Whatever.
The Screwfly Solution
My favourite quote: "Man's religion and metaphysics are the voices of his glands" (in turn a quote within the story).
More to the point: behavioural changes caused by parasites are more likely to become part of the "common understanding" of a whole culture, the invisible backgroud radiation, as it were - and less that of individuals freaking out a la "body snatchers".
The really successful parasites, that is.
To take it to an extreme, you could argue that the factoid presented by Blue Stone [(582566) on 2005.09.03 23:44 (#13473066)] above might be connected with religious rituals, more specifically those of Christening or "rebirth" in Christianity. Why did you decide to immerse yourself in water? "It's just a ritual", "God told me to do it", or "actually, my desires are being influenced by parasites in my brain" - who can honestly tell the difference, from the inside?
N.b.: this only becomes really scary if the parasites infect only part of a population. As long as we're all on the same high, "weeeee" is the word.
/doffs tin-foil hat
yes, we have no bananas
JAFFA! KREE!
+++ATH0
AIDS has some affect on the brain.
It changes sexual behavior a bit.
and in other news, Microsoft Lawyers have launched a suit against the humble threadworm for infringement of their business patent covering "influencing the mind of hosts to do really really stupid things".
Can this stuff be made into a liquid that can be dropped into my 5 year old son's milk on bath night? The sight of him actually running towards the bath of his own accord would be sheer heaven.
AT&ROFLMAO
it does not affect us humans, no way! We are immun....PLUNGES INTO WATER....
My last sig was ridiculed
Behold the evolution of the Goa'uld!
I find it scary.I also wonder what these small white dots that grow on my lips sometimes do, will they get me more girls?
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
WTF didn't we all think of that?
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
http://www.mememachinego.com/archives/001484.html
"On occasion one of these ants, while looking for food is infected by inhaling a microscopic spore from a fungus of the genus Tomentella. After being inhaled, the spore seats in the ant's tiny brain and begins to grow, causing changes in the ant's patterns of behavior. The Ant appears troubled and confused; for the first time in its life the ant leaves the forest floor and begins to climb.
Driven on by the growth of the fungus, the ant embarks on a long and exhaustive climb. Completely spent and having reached a prescribed height, the ant impales the plant with its mandibles. Thus affixed, the ant waits to die. Ants that have met their ends in this fashion are quite common in some sections of the forest.
The fungus continues to consume first the nerve cells and finally all the soft tissue that remains of the ant. After approximately two weeks a spike appears from what had been the head of the ant. This spike is about an inch and a half in length and has a bright orange tip heavy with spores which rain down onto the rain forest floor for other unsuspecting ants to inhale. "
If you go looking for the Megaloponera foetens, you'll find that the information all seems to trace back to a single source, the Museum of Jurassic Technology : http://www.mjt.org/index.html
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Finally, some real evidence for our Gould overlords!
I was in Southern Illinois with some friends at one time in the not too distant past, and if those guys aren't rednecks, then there is no such thing.
Anyhow, this complete redneck just came over to where we were standing and of course the conversation took a turn towards politics. The redneck blurted out "I'd rather vote for a hispanic-speakin' nigger than Bush".
For that reason, I don't think it's the rednecks that voted for Bush so much as the hardcore fundamentalist Christians.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
Lets not forget the Guinea Worm Foundation whose goal is to preserve and protect the Guinea Worm. They ask the question "Who speaks for the Guinea Worm"? With the clamour to save "cute" megafauna some of the less huggable and furry creature get a raw deal. In fact there are organization that are dedicated to the heartless eradication of the Guinea Worm.
A worm infection in villages in Africa - when it wants to burst out and have its eggs in water, it persuades the host to place its feet in the local river, so when another local drinks that water, the infection will continue.
;-) lol)
It does this by making the hosts foot burn. It burrows down the body to the feet.
This kinda life makes me argue against evolution, and against creationism.
It is just too freaky! (the humans, not the worm
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
"the life , universe and everything" was a reference to douglas adams.
There was an article about "mind-controlling" parasites in SciAm or another one of the mass-consumption journals 2-3 years ago. It highlighted one, which bored into the soft tissue of marine crabs, and caused them to become all hairy (yuck) and eventually behave as though they were pregnant, waving their claws around to spread the worm's larvae into the water. In another, some bird parasite would form an encrusted cashing around the brains of a particular fish, and would cause the fish to swim up to the surface sideways, making it shimmer under the water and be more likely to be eaten by the birds. They also had a picture of a parasitic worm that would eat the tongue of a fish and "take its place" in the host's mouth. That was a freakish, alien-like thing.
I, for one, welcome our zombified fungus-brained insect overlords, and would happily volunteer to round up suitable brains for future digestion...
Toxoplamsa Gondii (that cat thing) is much worse than you think. The CDC alone has quite a bit of information, but it's not well organized. (Google +site:cdc.gov)
For instance: Humans can get it by eating infected meat, but ALSO by inhaling spores from infected cat feces. Be concerned about cleaning that litterbox! Common medical practice is only concerned with cases when the initial acute infection is especially severe, which is common in pregnancy (the fetus is vulnerable to death)
But the disease persists in the mammal brain even in asympomatic adults. And it has a noteable correlation with schizophrenia.
This is all from the CDC website, but from various different pages and studies.
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