How does a parasite create zombie-like behavior? | Hacker News Reader

How does a parasite create zombie-like behavior?

experiment.com

117 pointsdluan29 comments

This is how it starts: "I became fascinated by fungi when I was a student, and so I decided to do a PhD in fungal genetics. By the end of my PhD I learned through watching BBC’s Planet Earth that certain fungi are able to manipulate insect behavior followed by the growth of beautiful fruiting bodies, leaving behind a rather morbid piece of natural art. The concept of a microbe being able to manipulate an animal’s brain just blew my mind. Ever since, I’ve been working to make the “zombie ants” a model system to study the concept of parasitic behavioral manipulation in detail."

She's patient zero.

I figured she was going to become a supervillain.

But maybe I've just been watching too much Venture Brothers.

If you want to lose sleep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMG-LWyNcAs

"The caterpillar, instead of building its cocoon to guard itself at night, wraps it around the larval wasps (which previously tore their way out of its body), and will continue to defend them until it starves to death.

The biggest danger for these parasitic wasps is being injected with another species of parasitic wasp".

EDIT: Wow, what a cool site - crowdfunding experiments!

Man I want to un-see that! What a horrible way to go

Free pest control; more cabbages for us.

Did anyone notice the rest of the site?

It seems surprising that this entire project was done with $4,500 of crowdfunding. That seems very cheap. I wonder how much of the project funding came from elsewhere.

https://experiment.com/projects/how-does-a-parasite-create-z...

Depends on how you count. A quick scan of the paper and my fairly fresh knowledge of academic sequencing prices suggests you could do the sequencing for around $3k, with reagents (assuming you don't count the cost of unused reagents). Add in airfare, room, and board to collect the ants and fungus and you're there.

Not included: equipment, lab space, stipend (figure 6 months of one grad student, which is astonishingly fast, and that's already $12-15k), and tuition. If you were proposing the same thing to a funding agency like the NIH or NSF, you're looking at ~$60-100k, which still doesn't include a lot of the equipment. I would guess this project was pitched to crowdfunders as "I'm doing all these other experiments, but would also like to do sequencing".

The Leucochloridium paradoxum infects snails, making their eyes look like caterpillars, catching birds attention and thus spreading through them.

More info: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leucochloridium_paradoxum

Christ, that's scary. If us mammals ever get something similar we'll have a zombie apocalypse going on...

That's the basic premise behind the monsters in "The Last of Us": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_of_Us

We do get something similar: toxoplasmosis.

Parasite makes mice lose fear of cats permanently: http://www.nature.com/news/parasite-makes-mice-lose-fear-of-...

Fatal attraction in rats infected with Toxoplasma gondii: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1690701/

Effects of Toxoplasma on Human Behavior: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2526142/

Please do not spread this false ideas. As other diseases toxoplamosis damage nerves in human foetus, either kills or make permanent damages in the nerves. But this is not the same as "converting adult people in remote-controlled robots", there is not a single proof of such evil plan, or that the parasite does this on purpose.

The papers I referred to have not been retracted, and there have been other studies which back their conclusions. So they aren't false ideas.

The changes described are the result of people being infected after birth, and not the result of damage to foetal nerves.

I'm not sure how a protozoan could be said to do anything "on purpose". What it does to rats is, however, clearly adaptive behaviour which enhances its chances to complete its life-cycle. This doesn't work when people are infected, as we are are a dead-end host, but it's thought it affects human behaviour via a mechanism similar to the one which works well in rats.

The behaviour of people infected is in no way similar to that of B-movie zombies, I'll grant you that.

It should be noted that Cattell's Sixteen Personality Factor Model has been greatly criticized by many researchers because of the inability of replication

Isn't this the fungus that's the inspration for the Last of Us videogame?

The fungus in her abstract is a type of cordyceps.

Yes.

Turns out, many types of fungus have evolved to be parasites of some kind. It's very rare that a parasite actually changes the behavior of the host.

I haven't come across this crowdfunding platform for research before and I absolutely love it. I suspect quite a few of my pennies will be going here.

It was formerly known as Microryza, but changed name about 2 years ago to better reflect the broader scope of their goal. My former roommate used to work for them, very cool project.

Another very well presented albiet brief introduction on this topic is this Ed Yong TED Talk https://www.ted.com/talks/ed_yong_suicidal_wasps_zombie_roac...

That talks is awesome thanks for it

Scientific content aside, I really think the web is a far superior medium for delivering technical papers. It allows for videos and interactive data exploration. I wish more scientists would publish this way.

+1. Fascinating topic, very nicely presented.

I didn't know this platform exists.

Somewhat related. "The girl with all the gifts", which is on this subject was a great read. Emotional, thought provoking in a sea of horrible zombie related writing/TV.

Charlie Stross asked about interesting parasites on his blog, recently - the comments section may be relevant, and of interest: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/11/a-small-...

This is a beautiful way to present scientific study, much more so than traditional methods! I'd love to see this trend of clarity and storytelling continue for more studies and experimental efforts.

tl;dr ant escapes. Bites human. So it begins; the end.

P.S: It's just a joke!

did you play the last of us? don't joke about this stuff man.

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