Parasite gives wolves what it takes to be pack leaders

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03836-9

by gscott • 4 years ago

211 161 4 years ago

Also; Grey wolves infected with this parasite are more likely to become pack leaders : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33738581

the_af9• 4 years ago

It's the same news, reported in two different places.

Trouble_0075• 4 years ago

I reiterate;

Toxoplasma gondii : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii

Risk factors for human infection : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#Immune_respo...

machina_ex_deus• 4 years ago

Imagine how dystopian that would sound in humans, like some science fiction horror.

"All the leaders are secretly infected by parasites".

Sounds like interesting sci fi movie premise.

mantas• 4 years ago

You don't need science finction. Just on following on some online communities:

:s/reptiloids/parasites/g

tomjuggler• 4 years ago

With one third of humans infected it's more like the plot of an upcoming documentary..

cruano• 4 years ago

testosterone and dopamine production is increased

Or advertisement

BlueTemplar2• 4 years ago

Now I understand the purpose of trigger warnings...

yesbut5• 4 years ago

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.

stncls• 4 years ago

I was once part of a department that was so well-managed and functional that I couldn't quite believe it. Then when time came choose a new department head, someone told me that they had always specifically avoided people who wanted to lead the department for the job.

tomger• 4 years ago

I think that’s the takeaway from the Lord of the Rings.

TEP_Kim_Il_Sung• 4 years ago

There's also the Dunning-Kruger Effect; Incompetent or dumb people don't recognize their own failings and assume they are geniuses. Smart and competent people know their own deficiencies and assume they're limited or dumb.

acuozzo• 4 years ago

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.

Which is why it's helpful to have as many (what I refer to as…) "power traps" in a society as possible: coaching, teaching, leading an HOA, leading a PTA, etc.

I have nothing against these endeavors, you must understand, but my view is that a person spending time acting as a judge for a dog show is less likely to pursue becoming an actual judge.

throwaway71271• 4 years ago

Well most of the leaders of the world today are psychopathic, so its not that far off.

s3000• 4 years ago

Culture can be seen as a symbiont for humans. Without infection, we are mere hunter-gatherers.

the_af9• 4 years ago

Culture is emergent behavior or a description of human behavior, it's not an external agent that becomes attached to humans, so the analogy really doesn't work.

doodledo32• 4 years ago

culture is the greatest egregore and the enemy of progress if not aligned properly

edit: and as the one below me already alluded to, your statement exists on a physical substrate whilst culture exists abstractly thus invalid

fatneckbeardz• 4 years ago

literally an episode of Star Trek TNG, episode title Conspiracy, season 1 episode 24

adastra22• 4 years ago

Then whatever you do, don't google "toxoplasma gondii"

nkzd• 4 years ago

There is an anime with a similar theme. Parasyte: The Maxim.

californiadreem3• 4 years ago

"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...

hindsightbias• 4 years ago

“Cats began their unique relationship with humans 10,000 to 12,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent, the geographic region where some of the earliest developments in human civilization occurred ”

Correlation or causation?

thaumasiotes• 4 years ago

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

I was under the impression that it wasn't so much that people considered the idea insane, as that they hated Semmelweis and were therefore strenuously opposed to anything associated with him.

californiadreem3• 4 years ago

The Article:

Wolves infected with a common parasite are more likely than uninfected animals to lead a pack, according to an analysis of more than 200 North American wolves1. Infected animals are also more likely to leave their home packs and strike out on their own.

From Wikipedia, Toxoplasmosis Gondii ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii ):

Although under-studied, penguin populations, especially those that share an environment with the human population, are at-risk due to parasite infections, mainly Toxoplasmosis gondii. The main subspecies of penguins found to be infected by T. gondii include wild Magellanic and Galapagos penguins, as well as blue and African penguins in captivity.[78] In one study, 57 (43.2%) of 132 serum samples of Magellanic penguins were found to have T. gondii. The island that the penguin is located, Magdalena Island, is known to have no cat populations, but a very frequent human population, indicating the possibility of transmission.

From Werner Herzog's Encounters at the End of the Earth ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7kdDeGXUjI ):

  HERZOG: Dr. Ainley, is there such thing as insanity among penguins? I try to 
  avoid the definition of insanity or derangement. I don't mean that a penguin
  might believe he or she is Lenin or Napoleon Bonaparte, but could they just go 
  crazy because they've had enough of their colony?

  AINLEY: Well, I've never seen a penguin bashing its head against a rock. They 
  do get disoriented. They end up in places they shouldn't be, a long way from 
  the ocean.

  HERZOG: These penguins are all heading to the open water to the right.
  But one of them caught our eye, the one in the center.
  He would neither go towards the feeding grounds at the edge of the ice,
  nor return to the colony. Shortly afterwards, we saw him heading straight 
  towards the mountains, some 70 kilometers away. Dr. Ainley explained
  that even if he caught him and brought him back to the colony, he would 
  immediately head right back for the mountains. But why?

  One of these disoriented, or deranged, penguins showed up at the New Harbor 
  diving camp, already some 80 kilometers away from where it should be.
  
  The rules for the humans are do not disturb or hold up the penguin. Stand still 
  and let him go on his way. And here, he's heading off into the interior of the 
  vast continent.

  With 5, 000 kilometers ahead of him, he's heading towards certain death.

JoeyBananas• 4 years ago

You should go on Joe Rogan podcast and give a lecture on this theory

amarant• 4 years ago

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!

klenwell• 4 years ago

Glad you mentioned this. Not horror, comedy!

Listen, you! I was born here. I raised a cloud of children here. My ancestors came over here on the sandwich.

One of my favorite episodes.

yyyk• 4 years ago

Sounds like interesting sci fi movie premise.

Well, their field of work is called poly-ticks...

wazoox• 4 years ago

People engaging in dangerous behaviour (fast-driving motorcycles, sky-diving and... entrepreneurship) are more prone to be infected with toxoplasma.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31980266/

trenchgun2• 4 years ago

Well... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33742779

yarg• 4 years ago

Animorphs.

chronolitus• 4 years ago

check out "Raised by Wolves"

988747• 4 years ago

And I always thought that wolves live in families, not packs, and what it takes to be a "pack leader" is being the father of other wolves.

sethammons• 4 years ago

I mentioned the article title to my high school animal enthusiast and that is the first thing they said; haven't researched it yet but it seems like these scientists would be "in the know."

the_af9• 4 years ago

I had the same thought. And also, the whole classification of "alpha male", "beta male" of the pack has been debunked, since there's no pack, just the wolves family. So the "betas" are actually the young adults of the family, and the "alphas" the father and mother.

tgv2• 4 years ago

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.

simonh2• 4 years ago

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.

fergal_reid2• 4 years ago

Havent read the paper, but your quote doesn't change the core point that it could be correlation.

E.g. perhaps aggression makes them more likely to eat infected animals and also more likely to challenge for leadership.

nonrandomstring• 4 years ago

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.

pydry• 4 years ago

Things also get interesting if you look at economic and social systems in this context.

novosel• 4 years ago

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31980266/

freeflight• 4 years ago

Perhaps they sampled in the wrong time frame. The full article might have more info, but the linked one doesn't.

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

tgv2• 4 years ago

The abstract alone already provides fodder against the pack-leader hypothesis: animals in a cougar domain are more likely to get T.gondii, and it might have altered the cougar's behavior instead, which would be more in line with the proposed mechanism behind rat and hyena behavior modification. And I think the only one that's got more decisive evidence is the one where the rodent becomes less afraid of a cat's smell.

Not saying it can't be the case. But the linked article is bad (ok, I should have seen that coming), and there's a lot left to disprove before the conclusion can be drawn. Yet the reactions already want to test politicians for infection, as if there were no leaders before cats were commonplace, and as if it isn't known to be bad for pregnancy.

ChrisMarshallNY• 4 years ago

Up to one-third of humans might be chronically infected.

That explains so much...

winReInstall3• 4 years ago

Syphillis makes you artistically brilliant, gondi makes you fearless, never felt so good, then just before exitus.

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.

shubb• 4 years ago

Thank you for the final line, I never realised that

winReInstall3• 4 years ago

Its all just thesis, nothing is proven yet.

arein3• 4 years ago

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.

bof_• 4 years ago

Tell me about it.

LightG• 4 years ago

The next crop of YC applicants should be interesting ...

Frummy• 4 years ago

Where can I buy infected cat feces?

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.

yayr• 4 years ago

Physical and behavioural changes have also been found in people: testosterone and dopamine production is increased and more risks are taken.

...

Up to one-third of humans might be chronically infected.

That is certainly an interesting research vector...

stared2• 4 years ago

Potetnially related: "Men Who Owned Cats As Kids May Have Higher Psychosis Risk" https://www.iflscience.com/men-who-owned-cats-as-kids-may-ha...

msrenee5• 4 years ago

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.

Communitivity• 4 years ago

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.

pvaldes2• 4 years ago

Yep, who would imagine that animals in societies tend to discriminate against the ill and diseased.

codexjourneys• 4 years ago

Bringing my comments over from the other submission:

Not just wolves. Toxoplasma infection also "may make people look more attractive to the opposite sex": https://www.earth.com/news/parasite-makes-infected-people-lo...

Is this because it increases risk-taking behavior? Who knows, but it's interesting that something with potentially significant health drawbacks may have enough benefits that it's evolved to coexist with us (up to 50% of people carry it).

Overall, it looks increasingly like microbes shape our behavior and emotional health: https://www.science.org/content/article/evidence-mounts-gut-...

helsinkiandrew2• 4 years ago

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.

https://wolf.org/wolf-info/wild-kids/wolf-families

henrydark• 4 years ago

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

helsinkiandrew2• 4 years ago

Perhaps its just bad wording and they mean "they are 11 times more likely than uninfected ones to leave their birth family (BUT don't necessarily start a new pack), and 46 times more likely to (create a pack and) become pack leaders.

stared2• 4 years ago

It is how I read that. They start their faimilies. Alpha male/female = parents. A pack is their extended family.

Alan_Dillman• 4 years ago

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.

deafpolygon• 4 years ago

So.. Chad parasites.

I'm off to find a parasite, wish me luck.

nix232• 4 years ago

Can we please do the same study with politicians?

msrenee5• 4 years ago

I think you're being facetious, but that would actually be an interesting segment of the population to look at for prevalence of T. gondii. I'd really like to see that study.

nix232• 4 years ago

Well no, it's was kind of a real question..but also with "the elon's of the world"

nathan_compton• 4 years ago

Can't wait till pickup artist types are infecting themselves on purpose so they can be more alpha.

BlueTemplar2• 4 years ago

possibly even increasing their chances of encountering cougars and exposing more members to infection

(I'll get my coat.)

hellfish• 4 years ago

Up to one-third of humans might be chronically infected.
Infections with toxoplasmosis are associated with a variety of neuropsychiatric and behavioral conditions
Research on human vaccines is ongoing.

I say 5 years before we have a moral panic about this

Invictus0• 4 years ago

Was this entire comment section generated by GPT-3?

jokoon2• 4 years ago

I'm still not very convinced of the scientific definition of "pack leader".

Behavior science is sensitive to interpretation, in my view.

It's a human bias to see human concepts in other species.

jonplackett2• 4 years ago

What do you mean by that? I thought it was a pretty accepted/normal thing for wolves to have a pack leader?

goodpoint2• 4 years ago

https://phys.org/news/2021-04-wolf-dont-alpha-males-females....

https://wolf.org/headlines/44265/

Kognito• 4 years ago

“Semi-dormant tissue cysts form in the brain, eyes and heart muscle, persisting the infection for life”

“Can also infect humans”

Well that doesn’t give me nightmares at all.

sva_• 4 years ago

In the United States it is estimated that 11% of the population 6 years and older have been infected with Toxoplasma. In various places throughout the world, it has been shown that more than 60% of some populations have been infected with Toxoplasma.

https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/toxoplasmosis/epi.html

pvaldes2• 4 years ago

Parasitized wolves (omegas being forced to eat the rotten leftovers) are losers that are often chased off the pack.

And most of them die for that.

Two titles. Same article; just without the starry-eyed documentary lens

meindnoch• 4 years ago

"Risky business: linking Toxoplasma gondii infection and entrepreneurship behaviours across individuals and countries" (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30051870/)

Among professionals attending entrepreneurship events, T. gondii-positive individuals were 1.8× more likely to have started their own business compared with other attendees (n = 197). Finally, after synthesizing and combining country-level databases on T. gondii infection from the past 25 years with the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor of entrepreneurial activity, we found that infection prevalence was a consistent, positive predictor of entrepreneurial activity and intentions at the national scale, regardless of whether previously identified economic covariates were included.

"The association of latent toxoplasmosis and level of serum testosterone in humans" (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5994116/)

Comparison of testosterone concentrations and control groups showed that testosterone concentration in study group was higher than that in control group with statistically significant difference.

"Toxoplasma gondii infection enhances testicular steroidogenesis in rats" (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/mec.12042)

Testosterone, a testicular steroid, is known to reduce fear and enhance sexual attractiveness in males. Here, we show that Toxoplasma gondii infection enhances expression of genes involved in facilitating synthesis of testosterone, resulting in greater testicular testosterone production in male rats.

eloff• 4 years ago

I can see the headlines now "you won't believe this one weird trick for bigger gains and better performance in bed".

Silverback_VII• 4 years ago

What is the legal framework for a product that infects people with "beneficial" parasites ?

marginalia_nu• 4 years ago

In a world where people are supplementing with turkesterone... It's an arthropod moulting hormone-analogue. But it's an ecdysteroid. So surely its ergogenic.

Sure, why not.

frontman1988• 4 years ago

2 billion people already have the Toxoplasma gondii in their brains. If it were to affect humanity is some profound way, we would have already linked it to something more substantial than n=197 studies of correlating success in entrepreneurship to the virus.

enkid• 4 years ago

That's not how science works.

jjallen• 4 years ago

This may very well be true. I wish you had posted more of a direct criticism of the study in question other than its small sample size.

It may have had a similar control group and could be relevant. It could be that individuals with more of the parasite are more likely to become entrepreneurs still.

TheBigSalad• 4 years ago

Good point. We should stop studying it because we should have known by now.

ajmurmann3• 4 years ago

There are other studies that link Toxoplasmosis to increased risk taking. Here one on increased likelihood of getting into car accidents: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC117239/#__ffn_s....

It's widely known for many years now. Twenty years ago there was a huge report about it on German public radio. The article I looked references research from the seventies.

It's been a strange philosophical point to me that catching a parasite that really wants to be in your cat can alter your personality and unless you are a pregnant woman the medical system ignores it.

wpietri4• 4 years ago

That's a pretty bold take from somebody who thinks it's a virus and not a single-celled parasite. But then as Charles Darwin said, "ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge."

jjtheblunt• 4 years ago

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.

Kiboneu2• 4 years ago

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.

psychphysic• 4 years ago

Ha!

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).

ShamelessC2• 4 years ago

Probably a good idea to critique the paper, not the press release. I haven't read it but for all you know they could have discussed this at length.

periheli0n• 4 years ago

Why do press releases always have to oversell the findings? I think it plays into the hands of science deniers.

I can see how press departments could claim that they’re only doing their job, but it’s potentially unethical and dangerous.

rainmaker124• 4 years ago

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.

c3534l• 4 years ago

How do we know that risk-taking doesn't lead to a higher rates of parasitic infection?

nahuel0x• 4 years ago

If a parasite gives the host a competitive advantage, is really a parasite?

parhamn• 4 years ago

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?

tehchromic• 4 years ago

I had heard the relationship between countries with better football teams having higher rates of t gondii, now it all makes sense

IngvarLynn• 4 years ago

Reminds me stories about school of fish following robot: https://newatlas.com/robofish-leeds-univiersity/15588/ or lobotomized fish (this looks more like anecdote than real research, i could not find the source).

Perhaps it is impossible to distinguish stupid boldness from real vision without complex communication.

drooby• 4 years ago

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?

trenchgun2• 4 years ago

Could be, but there are mechanisms which explain how toxoplasma creates the risky bhaviour: by increasing testosterone production.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33742779

snshn• 4 years ago

Elon Musk is probably full of 'em.

FirstLvR• 4 years ago

This whole post and comments are just incredible … can we predict one society success purely on parasite composition?

manv1• 4 years ago

Pussy changes everything?

californiadreem3• 4 years ago

Squeaky meal gets the grease.

majkinetor• 4 years ago

Fucking amazing...

How does it know what gene to promote? Its hard to beleive that such "primitive" organizm promotes exploration and risky behavior in number of different animals.

tonis2• 4 years ago

"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.

PortleyFool• 4 years ago

Obviously false.

Parasite gives wolves what it takes to be pack leaders

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