[HN Gopher] Parasitic worms 'manipulate' mantises onto asphalt r...
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Parasitic worms 'manipulate' mantises onto asphalt roads, say
researchers
Author : anigbrowl
Score : 130 points
Date : 2025-01-03 22:18 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (mainichi.jp)
(TXT) w3m dump (mainichi.jp)
| kaliqt wrote:
| Checkmate parasites.
|
| But seriously, I worry about this level of parasite infecting
| humans one day.
| someothherguyy wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior-altering_parasite
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| Well the Guinea worm does force humans to get into water to
| complete the parasitic cycle. But it's also on track to be
| fully eradicated.
|
| I think a parasite affecting human behavior in a substantial
| way is risking detection and elimination. So unlike with
| mantises this decreases the chance of survival, unless you
| paint a zombie-apocalypse kind of scenario.
|
| A successful human parasite has to alter the host behavior in a
| very subtle way. This could be happening even now and we
| wouldn't know. There's some evidence this is the case with
| toxoplasma increasing affection towards cats.
| rstuart4133 wrote:
| > Well the Guinea worm does force humans to get into water to
| complete the parasitic cycle.
|
| How they do this [0]:
|
| - Humans typically get infected when they unintentionally
| ingest copepods while drinking water.
|
| - During digestion the copepods die, releasing the D.
| medinensis larvae. The larvae exit the digestive tract by
| penetrating the stomach and intestine
|
| - About a year after the initial infection, the female
| migrates to the skin, forms an ulcer, and emerges.
|
| - Upon reaching its destination, the worm forms a fluid-
| filled blister under the skin.[5] Over 1-3 days, the blister
| grows larger, begins to cause severe burning pain
|
| - When the wound touches fresh water, the female spews a
| milky-white substance containing hundreds of thousands of
| larvae into the water.
|
| - The larvae are eaten by copepods, and after two to three
| weeks of development, they are infectious to humans again.
|
| [0] All of the above was copy & pasted from:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracunculiasis
| praptak wrote:
| Part of the eradication effort was hacking this mechanism
| by convincing humans to use a closed container of water
| when this happens. The contaminated water can then be
| safely disposed thus breaking the cycle.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Star Trek actually did an episode which addresses such a
| parasite. The episode was one of several episodes banned in a
| few places, I think for showing how the uninfected humans had
| to eradicate the infected humans violently.
| nilamo wrote:
| Star Trek did a whole Wrath of Khan that addresses such a
| parasite :p
| ithkuil wrote:
| Humans routinely have very weird behaviours and while often
| we classify them as illness who knows how many of those we
| just call "a political view".
| HKH2 wrote:
| SSRIs, birth pills and other 'harmless' drugs modify
| behaviour too.
| ithkuil wrote:
| Fwiw food and lack thereof modifies behaviour too.
| galleywest200 wrote:
| If I fail to eat regularly for about 3 days I sink into a
| deep funk which takes a few days of regular eating to
| come out of.
|
| I used to/have a problem where I just don't have the
| energy to eat due to being hungry and its a viscious
| cycle.
| HKH2 wrote:
| What happens when you fast?
| lostlogin wrote:
| Isn't that failing to eat regularly?
| unfitted2545 wrote:
| This idea has grown on me a lot after watching Sam Harris'
| 2013 Ted Talk, on deconstructing religion, logic and
| morality:
|
| https://youtu.be/qn3ITqtGzQ8
| lostlogin wrote:
| As you say, there are a lot of these connections, another
| is increased religiosity with neurological disorders like
| epilepsy and schizophrenia.
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4073495/ https://w
| ww.researchgate.net/publication/384855860_Religiosi...
| zbyforgotp wrote:
| Or maybe it could alter the behaviour in a positve way:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasites_Lost
| DonHopkins wrote:
| >But it's also on track to be fully eradicated.
|
| Thanks to Jimmy Carter! (And also a guy named Donald Hopkins,
| who's not me.)
|
| https://www.cartercenter.org/about/experts/donald_hopkins.ht.
| ..
| carlosjobim wrote:
| They do and are what people in the past would call "demons".
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| An STD that increased human promiscuity seems like it could be
| really successful at spreading. I wonder if any existing STDs
| have evolved to do anything close to this.
| devmor wrote:
| The social stigma around being seen as "dirty" for having an
| STI is known to drive the infected into more risky sexual
| behaviors and less hygienic partners. This is why normalizing
| testing and treatment as everyday things are part of the
| public health effort.
| ajuc wrote:
| The parasites you should be worried about are memes (in the
| biological meaning - an idea that forces host to reproduce and
| spread it - not "a funny image" meaning).
|
| We already have such ideas that change human behaviour on
| massive scale and cause millions of deaths.
| nik282000 wrote:
| I've know about horsehair worms for years and noticed a load of
| mantises on the road this fall but never made the connection >_<
|
| I wonder how much this lowers the rate of infection in the long
| term.
| slaucon wrote:
| In a similar vein, I always found it interesting (although
| frightening) that rabies cause hydrophobia. The theory is that
| drinking water can wash away the virus from your saliva,
| inhibiting its ability to spread through bites.
|
| It makes sense that a virus passed through saliva would evolve
| like this, but I just find it particularly unsettling when a
| pathogen can effect higher-level behaviors like drinking water
| (or jumping into water for mantises).
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > I always found it interesting (although frightening) that
| rabies cause hydrophobia.
|
| Well, there are two potential senses of "hydrophobia".
|
| In its primary use, it means "rabies", and it's not really
| interesting that rabies would cause that.
|
| In rare cases, it could mean "fear of water", which rabies
| doesn't cause. Rabies causes pain when swallowing. The pain
| causes fear through conventional mechanisms.
| sebtron wrote:
| I have not checked the sources, but according to Wikipedia
| [1]:
|
| _Rabies has also occasionally been referred to as
| hydrophobia ( "fear of water") throughout its history. It
| refers to a set of symptoms in the later stages of an
| infection in which the person has difficulty swallowing,
| shows panic when presented with liquids to drink, and cannot
| quench their thirst. Saliva production is greatly increased,
| and attempts to drink, or even the intention or suggestion of
| drinking, may cause excruciatingly painful spasms of the
| muscles in the throat and larynx. Since the infected
| individual cannot swallow saliva and water, the virus has a
| much higher chance of being transmitted, because it
| multiplies and accumulates in the salivary glands and is
| transmitted through biting._
|
| It seems more than just "pain when swallowing".
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabies
| dotancohen wrote:
| It does seem like your comment for the most part supports
| the GP comment, other than the disagreement about the
| definition of pain.
|
| For what it's worth, I see the word pain as he used it to
| be a better fit than the word fear, as in phobia.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Pain doesn't cause panic.
| kruffalon wrote:
| Sure, I don't know how it works physiologically...
|
| But anecdata at least suggests that being in enough pain
| can cause panic, but it might do so indirectly so that
| the fear is created around the inability to think the
| pain will ever end or at least lessen at least a bit.
| withinboredom wrote:
| My leg has been fucked for 15 years. Sometimes it hurts
| so bad, I'd need narcotics to make it go away. I don't
| panic when walking, I just deal with it because I need to
| get to my destination. If you are thirsty, you will drink
| through the pain. Panic is something else.
| kruffalon wrote:
| I'm sorry that you have that pain in the first place but
| I'm glad that you are able to process being in pain
| without getting into a panic.
| imchillyb wrote:
| Panic is a learned behavior.
|
| Exposure to a stimulus is often both cause and trigger.
|
| How is it that you're an adult and still don't know this.
|
| Toddlers know this.
| withinboredom wrote:
| I think you've gotten fear confused with panic. Fear is
| indeed a learned behavior, panic is not. Panic is beyond
| rational thinking, it is what gets people who save
| drowning people dead. Panic is what gets normal humans
| dead when in bad situations. Panic is not learned, it
| saves your ass at all costs -- or gets you killed.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _think you 've gotten fear confused with panic_
|
| They're just wrong. Neither panic nor fear is learned
| behaviour. _What_ one panics about or fears is in part
| learned. But there is still a lot of instinct at play.
| pockmarked19 wrote:
| It does.
|
| If I come into the room and stab you with a steak knife
| every time you drink, and sometimes even if you only
| think about drinking, you will definitely panic when
| drinking is brought up in the future, after some time.
|
| Not sure what's wrong with you that you cannot empathize.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| Not sure that's comparable to a situation where a virus
| like Rabies causes someone to inherently fear water,
| regardless of pain.
| withinboredom wrote:
| As someone who has most definitely been in more shit than
| most humans on this planet, I can empathize just fine.
|
| As I mentioned in a sibling comment, I think you've
| confused fear with panic. Fear can be conditioned, panic
| cannot. You can panic from fear, but it is not a
| guaranteed thing, and often, that panic is long after the
| fear is gone (aka PTSD).
|
| Panic is an autonomic response to saving yourself at all
| costs. It is not something you "learn" or have
| "conditioned" into you, and if so, definitely not over
| the course of a few weeks that you have a virus;
| otherwise we'd all be dead from Covid and go into a panic
| every time we cough.
|
| Panic is what causes you to drown a person saving you, so
| that you can breathe. Panic is what causes you to over-
| correct and steer into a tree. Panic is what causes you
| to run out of your house, in the middle of winter in
| pajamas, because there was a spider. Panic has a cause,
| but it is mindless with the only goal of saving oneself.
| The action itself is often quite stupid-looking, in
| hindsight and lack of context.
|
| Most people have never seen a person panic, first-hand.
| Most people have never panicked. Today's world is largely
| safe, so it is easy to confuse fear with panic.
| gosub100 wrote:
| Deep water doesn't cause pain, yet a significant portion
| of people would panic upon being dropped into it.
| wongarsu wrote:
| I feel like calling "shows panic when presented with
| liquids to drink" a fear of water is a perfectly fine
| shorthand. Even if it might not be a literal fear of all
| forms of water, only water you are supposed to drink
| GuB-42 wrote:
| It is probably a bit of both.
|
| From the same Wikipedia article
|
| > symptoms can include slight or partial paralysis,
| anxiety, insomnia, confusion, agitation, abnormal behavior,
| paranoia, terror, and hallucinations
|
| There is more than just pain here. The virus changes the
| host behavior, making it more aggressive, so it is very
| possible that it also promotes a panic reaction to pain.
| amelius wrote:
| On the other hand, without saliva the virus cannot spread, and
| you need water to have saliva.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Evolution has already done the math on this
|
| (Or more precisely, it's already _doing_ the math, and the
| current answer is that hydrophobia is the better solution
| [for rabies' purposes])
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| Really that is not how evolution works
| amelius wrote:
| The particular math used might get stuck in a local optimum
| ...
| brookst wrote:
| The frightening part is that it's a cognitive effect. That's
| crazy. And it opens the whole "how much of our personality is
| real versus controlled by microbes" question.
| wizardforhire wrote:
| Ship of Theseus now with your own mind.
| gosub100 wrote:
| Imagine there was a virus or parasite that just made you feel
| pleasure, all the time, with no tolerance effects?
|
| I wonder what progress has been made in addiction medicine
| for meds that simply prevent the development of tolerance? If
| possible, it would fall under the category of harm reduction.
| Failing the patient to get sober, they could at least
| continue getting high on the same amount which might prevent
| their failure to function.
| emptiestplace wrote:
| I appreciate harm reduction but I think any such 'perfect'
| drug would lead to dehydration / starvation deaths, or at
| least a lot more people living on the streets.
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| That is extremely far fetched
| leonim wrote:
| If you are interested in this subject, Carl Zimmer wrote a great
| book that has all sorts of examples of parasites that control
| their host: "Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's
| Most Dangerous Creatures"
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Parasite-Rex-Bizarre-Dangerous-Creatu...
| sampo wrote:
| The seminal work is the 1982 book "The Extended Phenotype" by
| Richard Dawkins.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > infected mantises were attracted to sources with stronger
| horizontally polarized light.
|
| I wish the article provided and explanation for the mechanism.
| toenail wrote:
| They would probably have to guess, but start here
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarization_(waves)
|
| > Many animals are capable of perceiving some of the components
| of the polarization of light, e.g., linear horizontally
| polarized light. This is generally used for navigational
| purposes, since the linear polarization of sky light is always
| perpendicular to the direction of the sun.
| andsoitis wrote:
| I'm aware of that, thanks. What I meant is how does the worm
| change the mantis to have this perception when they
| previously didn't.
| Ichthypresbyter wrote:
| They were already able to perceive polarized light [0],
| like many other arthropods, though AFAIK it's not clear
| what they normally use this perception for.
|
| [0]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317167346_Head_
| trac...
| tonis2 wrote:
| Just my fantasy scenario, imagine if some kind of yeast/virus
| affects humans to eat so much sugar, we never need so much sugar,
| but there's some-kind of yeast inside us that controls us, to
| create and consume sugar for it.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| I've always assumed that this was sort of a known thing.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| AFAIK, it's not anything close to "known". But it's an open
| possibility that is being actively researched and has some
| supporting evidence.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| Depends on your epistemology, I guess.
| lambertsimnel wrote:
| > imagine if some kind of yeast/virus affects humans to eat so
| much sugar
|
| I think the gut microbiome can indeed do this.
|
| The episode called "Swap Out Sugar" of the BBC podcast Just One
| Thing explains more - the relevant section is from after 7
| minutes to before 12 minutes into the episode:
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09by3yy/episodes/downloads...
| devmor wrote:
| As far as I am aware this is a legitimate theory and angle of
| study around the guy microbiome, not just a fantasy.
| candidafighter2 wrote:
| Similarly Candida can drive people to crave sugar, and the more
| sugar they consume, the more Candida thrives. This growth leads
| to biofilms in the intestine that block the absorption of
| essential B vitamins like thiamine. Without enough thiamine the
| Krebs cycle energy-producing process fails leading to chronic
| fatigue. This is what causes most peoples chronic fatigue btw.
| Over time, this can significantly impact health and even
| contribute to their premature deaths. Then after death Candida
| feeds on the body during decomposition. Was this it's goal?
| Likely.
| gruez wrote:
| >Similarly Candida can drive people to crave sugar
|
| Source? I skimmed the wikipedia article and it doesn't mention
| this.
| zbyforgotp wrote:
| I skeptical. Carbs are converted to glucose in the intestines
| and we eat orders of magnitude more glucose in carbs than in
| sweets so candida should not really care about sweets, but all
| these studies are about craving sweets not carbs in general.
| nameless912 wrote:
| > this is what causes most peoples chronic fatigue
|
| [Citation needed] I've never heard of this, and I feel like it
| would be much bigger news if there was a conclusive link
| Biganon wrote:
| Look at their username; sounds like a pet theory of theirs
| klausa wrote:
| Candida is one of the disease that cranks online love to
| diagnose themselves with; and blame all of their problems on;
| and endlessly expand the scope and symptoms of.
|
| Someone talking about Candida is not necessarily a crank; but
| the chances are pretty high.
|
| It's also a very old crank-territory: I've learned it from a
| fantastic Polish blog documenting medical quackery back in
| _2009_; if anyone feels like trudging through it with Google
| Translate: https://blogdebart.hell.pl/2009/06/02/choroby-
| urojone-candid...
| cbxjksls wrote:
| Sublingual B vitamins have turned around my chronic fatigue.
|
| I've been taking it orally for years without the aame effect,
| so my running theory is that I have an issue with absorption in
| my gut.
|
| Is there a way to test for candida?
| elevaet wrote:
| Candida species cause thrush and yeast infections. Afaik they
| are fairly ubiquitous in the human biome but become
| problematic when Candida gets out of control.
|
| So if you can test for it chemically there could be positives
| even if it's not a problem. So it would be a matter of
| looking under a microscope at the gut microbiome and checking
| if theres an overgrowth. And then treatment is tricky in the
| gut - how do you target a single problematic species but keep
| the rest of the microbiome intact? And if you do knock it
| out, you still need to create the conditions where it doesnt
| just bloom again since its ubiquitous.
|
| In the end it might be a thing where you have to follow
| general gut health advice and try to cultivate a healthy gut
| microbiome.
| freedomben wrote:
| There are places that will do a stool analysis for you, but
| it's a lot of guesswork. Many quacks have also discovered
| that they can get people to pay a lot of money hoping for
| relief, and they don't hesitate to take advantage. It's a
| shame because there are honest people out there trying to
| help, but sorting the wheat from the chaff is quite the
| order.
|
| My opinion is that if you're concerned, the best thing is to
| make sure you aren't overeating carbs (I suggest limiting
| carbs to 30-40g per meal and 120g per day, and avoid simple
| carbs) and ideally take a probiotic and/or consume fermented
| foods such as yogurt, kombucha, etc that naturally provide
| probiotics. The carb limiting is the most important. If you
| do nothing else, do that. Even if you don't have an issue
| with candida, you'll feel better overall and get healthier.
| Again this is just my opinion as someone who has spent years
| reading and experimenting on myself, but is not formally
| educated or trained so take with a grain of salt.
| gosub100 wrote:
| Can you narrow it down to which specific B vitamin does it?
| If you really wanted to undertake a project, you could do a
| single blind study with placebo vs real b vitamins and prove
| if they work (grind up real vitamins and press them back in a
| way they look like placebo, put them in 30 day packs, and ask
| a friend to label and mix them up). Then make your guess
| after several months.
| Frederation wrote:
| If only your username didnt rat you out.
| dataviz1000 wrote:
| > Sea turtle hatchlings have an inborn tendency to move in the
| brightest direction. On a natural beach, the brightest direction
| is most often the open view of the night sky over, and reflected
| by, the ocean. [0]
|
| Man made artificial lighting greatly affect sea turtle hatchlings
| also. There are several groups of volunteers who watch the eggs
| for hatching and will help the sea turtles make their way towards
| the sea.
|
| The volunteers use apps to coordinate watching the eggs and there
| is tons of data collected. Using AI / ML to help determine when
| the eggs will hatch or creating autonomous drones to watch the
| eggs and perhaps assist in corralling the hatchlings to the sea
| would make great PhD dissertation subjects.
|
| [0] https://myfwc.com/research/wildlife/sea-
| turtles/threats/arti...
| TrackerFF wrote:
| IIRC, there's some parasite that makes the host (some species of
| insects) climb up plants, as high as possible, so that it can be
| eaten by birds and other animals.
|
| So that the parasite can reproduce inside the new host, and
| spread further.
| doubleg72 wrote:
| Yes, you recall correctly.
| dingnuts wrote:
| Yes, the game and TV show The Last of Us made cordyceps a
| fairly well known genus
| TeaBrain wrote:
| Cordyceps are also a major plot device in the novel Cold
| Storage, which is being developed into a film.
| griffzhowl wrote:
| Cordyceps is a bit different in that it makes the host insect
| clamp down on a branch or twig until death so that when the
| fruiting body grows out of the host, its spores are spread
| through the air, where it can infect similar insects.
|
| What OP is talking about sounds more like the lancet liver
| fluke, which has a stage of its lifecycle inside an ant and a
| stage inside a grazing animal, so it makes an infected ant
| climb to the top of a grass stalk. Amazingly, the ants only
| do this from dusk till dawn, resuming their normal activities
| if they haven't been eaten by dawn. The rationale seems to be
| that being exposed to the hot sun during the day could
| quickly kill the ant along with its passenger flukes
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Look at all the examples of manipulation in this thread. I have
| to wonder just how manipulated humans are everyday and we don't
| even realize it. It has become 'human nature'.
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