[slaucon]

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).

[brookst]

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]

Ship of Theseus now with your own mind.

[gosub100]

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.

[thaumasiotes]

> 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]

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

[amelius]

On the other hand, without saliva the virus cannot spread, and you need water to have saliva.

[llamaimperative]

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]

That is extremely far fetched