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 intermediate host of T.gondii. Perhaps they sampled in the wrong time frame. The full article might have more info, but the linked one doesn't.
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 Toxoplasma Gondii make some people
really like cats. So maybe mad cat lady syndrome is treatable with drugs :)
Who knows what super-systems we are unwittingly a part of. That seems
an interesting area for big-data + AI hypothesis synthesis - we may
find new explanations or even whole new branches of behaviour in
psychology.
They looked at animals that were and were not infected, throughout their lives, and saw what they did, so they knew whether the animals were infected or not before they became pack leaders. From the article:
>The team looked at 256 blood samples from 229 wolves, which had been carefully watched throughout their lives, and had their life histories and social status recorded. Meyer and Cassidy found that infected wolves were 11 times more likely than uninfected ones to leave their birth family to start a new pack, and 46 times more likely to become pack leaders — often the only wolves in the pack that breed.
"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 might find unpalatable is the idea that parasitic infection could determine so fundamentally political beliefs and ideology, but consider that the idea of not cleaning your hands directly led to disease was considered literal insanity (see the tragic history of Ignaz Semmelweis) prior to germ theory. Sometimes it's the smallest catalysts that cause the largest changes. For the want of a nail...
There is the idea that anyone that wants to be a leader probably shouldn't be a leader. These are the types of people who crave being in positions of authority over others. They'll step on anyone they need to in order to get the the top. They might be the leader, but they usually aren't necessarily the types of people that are looking out for the best interests of the people they lead.
Futurama made an episode kinda like this. But it's not so dystopic: if anything it kinda made me want to eat an egg salad sandwich from a vendomat in the bathroom of a truck stop!
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 into this since this seems to be low hanging fruit compared to possible compound effects of t. gondii influence on society.
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 important to disentangle somewhat cause and correlation.
In humans it's theorised to increase risk of car accidents (based on a french study monitoring speeding and traffic rule obedience).
> Cassidy found that infected wolves were 11 times more likely than uninfected ones to leave their birth family to start a new pack, and 46 times more likely to become pack leaders
I thought we now believe that wolf packs are purely family units - mother, father and their cubs. There's no alpha wolves leading a pack of other male and female wolves, just stray wolves and family units. So a wolf pack is only comprised of the leader and its cubs.
Sure, but there has to be stray wolves forming new packs. Every pack in existence started that way. While there is no fight for who will be "The Alpha", obviously there is a patriarch and matriarch of the pack.
I don't k ow anything about wolves or parasites, but those two things don't contradict each other. Maybe wolves with the parasite are exactly more likely to form such a family unit
If 30-50% of people have toxoplasma gondii, "gondi makes you fearless, never felt so good, then just before exitus" sounds like a exaggeration, because I doubt 50% are fearless, never felt so good.
That article uses psychosis and schizophrenia interchangeably. There's also no mention of the familial nature of schizophrenia. There's a genetic link in many cases and there's been work in that area that's starting to identify particular genes that are associated with the disorder.
It could be that infection with T. gondii is sometimes the difference between simply having a predisposition towards schizophrenia and actually developing the symptoms. Pot use in the late teens and early 20s can have the same effect. It doesn't cause schizophrenia, but it may be a trigger than leads a genetically predisposed individual to develop the disorder.
Or could it be that wolves that are already more likely to hunt cougars (thus eat them and get the parasite) have high risk taking behavior and are thus more likely to be pack leaders? And the parasite actually has a benign influence on the host?
The research results are an interesting find and good work. They indicate a clear need for more research. They aren't conclusive as is, at least with the limited info I found (I haven't found a papers archive from The Wolf Society 2022 conference, so I had to go by press articles). Sample size of 229 seems small, considering the diversity among wolf packs. For example, were these wolves from one state vs multiple states. Getting a larger sample size would be hard but not impossible if the study lasted a long time. Science is about building a stairway - 99% steps 1% momentous landings that built on all the steps before them. This work is a good solid step.
it would be fascinating to see a plot of toxoplasma gondii hitting the first page of HN vs time.
It seems periodic, and i'm not kidding. (kinda like Jodi Foster in Contact with the headphones on)
Not this time, but usually it's a revelation about the protozoan with mice being fearless around cats, or about humans living with cats, with associated proposals of drama, perhaps to drive pageviews.
I really don't get T. Gondii. I read all these article about how it might be affecting us, a source of mental health disorders, so on and so on. And it is very common in household cats + a lot of people already have it. CDC says, "While the parasite is found throughout the world, more than 40 million people in the United States may be infected with the Toxoplasma parasite." I assume present tense means currently infected?
Genuinely curious, why aren't we doing an annual anti-parasitic or something given the drugs are relatively benign?
"11 times more likely than uninfected ones to leave their birth family to start a new pack, and 46 times more likely to become pack leaders — often the only wolves in the pack that breed."
Wouldnt it be highly preferable, from the parasites side of evolution, that only the males, that have parasite infection will be able to breed ?
Toxoplasma trying to create their own empire probably.
Keep in mind that this is simply an observational study and has all the usual caveats around confounders and biases. It supports a causal hypothesis, but like any simple observational study, that support is weak and unconvincing.
[+] [-] tgv|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nonrandomstring|3 years ago|reply
Another apocryphal story is cats carrying Toxoplasma Gondii make some people really like cats. So maybe mad cat lady syndrome is treatable with drugs :)
Who knows what super-systems we are unwittingly a part of. That seems an interesting area for big-data + AI hypothesis synthesis - we may find new explanations or even whole new branches of behaviour in psychology.
[+] [-] simonh|3 years ago|reply
>The team looked at 256 blood samples from 229 wolves, which had been carefully watched throughout their lives, and had their life histories and social status recorded. Meyer and Cassidy found that infected wolves were 11 times more likely than uninfected ones to leave their birth family to start a new pack, and 46 times more likely to become pack leaders — often the only wolves in the pack that breed.
[+] [-] freeflight|3 years ago|reply
The data was collected over nearly 27 years, the link to the full open access paper is in the references; https://doi.org/10.1038%2Fs42003-022-04122-0
[+] [-] machina_ex_deus|3 years ago|reply
"All the leaders are secretly infected by parasites".
Sounds like interesting sci fi movie premise.
[+] [-] californiadreem|3 years ago|reply
What people might find unpalatable is the idea that parasitic infection could determine so fundamentally political beliefs and ideology, but consider that the idea of not cleaning your hands directly led to disease was considered literal insanity (see the tragic history of Ignaz Semmelweis) prior to germ theory. Sometimes it's the smallest catalysts that cause the largest changes. For the want of a nail...
[+] [-] yesbut|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wazoox|3 years ago|reply
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31980266/
[+] [-] tomjuggler|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] s3000|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amarant|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adastra22|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nkzd|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fatneckbeardz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mantas|3 years ago|reply
> :s/reptiloids/parasites/g
[+] [-] trenchgun|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yyyk|3 years ago|reply
Well, their field of work is called poly-ticks...
[+] [-] yarg|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jackdoe|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chronolitus|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] lzooz|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Kiboneu|3 years ago|reply
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 into this since this seems to be low hanging fruit compared to possible compound effects of t. gondii influence on society.
[+] [-] psychphysic|3 years ago|reply
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 important to disentangle somewhat cause and correlation.
In humans it's theorised to increase risk of car accidents (based on a french study monitoring speeding and traffic rule obedience).
[+] [-] helsinkiandrew|3 years ago|reply
I thought we now believe that wolf packs are purely family units - mother, father and their cubs. There's no alpha wolves leading a pack of other male and female wolves, just stray wolves and family units. So a wolf pack is only comprised of the leader and its cubs.
https://wolf.org/wolf-info/wild-kids/wolf-families
[+] [-] stared|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Alan_Dillman|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] henrydark|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] winReInstall|3 years ago|reply
So, in conclusion, if the vector has requirements, the infection will try to make the host capable of fullfilment.
If the infection needs sugar, the mitochondria, will make the amobea crawl to algea.
[+] [-] arein3|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stared|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] msrenee|3 years ago|reply
It could be that infection with T. gondii is sometimes the difference between simply having a predisposition towards schizophrenia and actually developing the symptoms. Pot use in the late teens and early 20s can have the same effect. It doesn't cause schizophrenia, but it may be a trigger than leads a genetically predisposed individual to develop the disorder.
[+] [-] nathan_compton|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BlueTemplar|3 years ago|reply
(I'll get my coat.)
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] 988747|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drooby|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trenchgun|3 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33742779
[+] [-] Communitivity|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pvaldes|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Trouble_007|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jjtheblunt|3 years ago|reply
It seems periodic, and i'm not kidding. (kinda like Jodi Foster in Contact with the headphones on)
Not this time, but usually it's a revelation about the protozoan with mice being fearless around cats, or about humans living with cats, with associated proposals of drama, perhaps to drive pageviews.
[+] [-] yayr|3 years ago|reply
...
> Up to one-third of humans might be chronically infected.
That is certainly an interesting research vector...
[+] [-] parhamn|3 years ago|reply
Genuinely curious, why aren't we doing an annual anti-parasitic or something given the drugs are relatively benign?
[+] [-] Frummy|3 years ago|reply
Maybe when aliens visit us they will say, no, step aside humans, we are here to talk to the true leaders of the planet. Bring out your microscopes.
[+] [-] IngvarLynn|3 years ago|reply
Perhaps it is impossible to distinguish stupid boldness from real vision without complex communication.
[+] [-] tonis2|3 years ago|reply
Wouldnt it be highly preferable, from the parasites side of evolution, that only the males, that have parasite infection will be able to breed ?
Toxoplasma trying to create their own empire probably.
[+] [-] Kognito|3 years ago|reply
“Can also infect humans”
Well that doesn’t give me nightmares at all.
[+] [-] rainmaker124|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pvaldes|3 years ago|reply
And most of them die for that.
Two titles. Same article; just without the starry-eyed documentary lens