November 11, 2005

• According to the Yorkshire farmer in Herriott's "All Creatures Great and Small": "'osses can't take much". I recall a couple times having to walk my horse all night because he'd got into something and ate way too much of it. The natural state of an awful lot of animals is full of vermin (check out a deer sometime) and these weaken them, often to the point that they become prey. Dogs and cats do seem to be awfully hardy, though.
• Having been through two dogs and their near fatal brushes with parvo, I'm inclined to think that most animals just do a damn good job breeding. Really, there's a reason cats and dogs have like six to a litter.
• To a certain extent we might have increased our succeptability, as a species, to diseases by the very development of cures. (e.g. certain types of genes don't get 'weeded out' as much as they would otherwise) And I would say that yes, to some degree we have less awareness (not necessarily understand of) animal diseases, and that may make us seem fragile in comparison. But I also think it's far too simplistic to say we've "traded" hardiness for other things. Our immune systems may be weakened on an individual level by our avoidance of certain pathogens (e.g. not eating feces), but this is not really an evolutionary phenomenon. Evolutionarily, we have evolved the smarts to allow us to fight pathogens with the help of external agents. That, to me, is CRAZY, and means we're orders of magnitude beyond any natural, internal protection system. Any genetic "tradeoffs" have come as a result of genetic inter- and intraspecies competition (again, for reproduction, not simply survival). These tradeoffs certainly happen, but I don't think we have incurred any significant losses to our natural pathogen defense --our smarts have been having big effects on our gene pool probably since at least the onset of agriculture, but I doubt that in terms of diseases we are significantly disadvanaged in any ways from any other dominantly successful subspecies. In fact, in some ways we're probably better of as a species because our global society and widely distributed immunities. Disclaimer: This topic is hugely complex and I don't know all that much about it. If I'm wrong, let me know.
• The laundry list of things that kill us is depressingly long, but we are in fact incredibly tough creatures. Compared to most, there isn't much that kills us. We are one nasty mother, as species go. Put it this way: how many vertebrates can you name that live on all six major continents? We'll eat almost anything; live almost anywhere, and have the brain power to take on any animal on the planet. As a species, we are anything but pussies. Our immune systems are actually one of nature's top of the line models, believe it or not. Adults in particular are unusually resistant to environmental toxins as well when compared to other animals. (And thank goodness considering the crap we surround ourselves with).
• Actually - it comes to some degree from the definition of parasitism. If you think about it the ultimate parasite is one which lives in but does not kill its host-this allows the parasite to survive and continue reproducing for an extended period of time. Now if you extend this to the evolutionary scale - in the scheme of things Homo sapiens is a relatively new host so the relationship is as yet imperfect. There are some types of malaria which happily co-exist in their reptilian hosts whereas the human ones are debilitating or kill. It was an hypothesis (disclaimer - i havent worked in this field for a while now) that the human variants had recently (think geological time) crossed over from simian hosts... also more recently possibly HIV. Therefore host and parasite havent had evolutionary time to develop an 'equitable' partnership as such. And no, we don't do ourselves any favours by running around with germ killing sprays etc because the only way the immune system responds and evolves is to challenge it. No challenge no response and seemingly innocuous bugs can kill. Also part of the reason that the general prescription of antibiotics for viral infections has started to be reeled in as they are only really effective against bacterial infections - the problem with the sub cellular parasites is that their reproduction is so relatively fast (which also allows them to develop resistant strains quickly) - so they can rely on replication and speed of transmission rather than keeping the host alive
• I mean hey - parasites are 'smart' there is actually one multiple cellular bug ( forgotten just which off the top of my head) that makes ants crawl up stalks of grass and remain their overnight as opposed to going back into the safe ant nest because the next stage of the life cycle requires that they be eaten by a sheep so to maximise the possibility they 'change' the ant behaviour!
• And, afterall, most pets only lick their own butts and they would only get what they already have.
• Monkeys always come through with such great stuff! It's true that horses, aside from mustangs, and various wild pony populations are pretty damn feeble; I imagine because so much of the breeding in the last few hundred years has been for looks, gait and racing rather than strength or hardiness. Dogs are scavengers and cats...well cats are from the planet Freakout. Put it this way: how many vertebrates can you name that live on all six major continents? We'll eat almost anything; live almost anywhere... Heh. I'm reading Robert Sullivan's "Rats" at the moment. Therefore host and parasite havent had evolutionary time to develop an 'equitable' partnership as such. This idea is fascinating.
• "...most pets only lick their own butts..." This is really gross, but we have a problem in Vancouver with dogs getting sick from eating human shit...but it's not the shit that's making them sick; it's the fact that it's shit from junkies and it's the residual heroin/crack/meth that's making them deathly ill. The local vets are quite familiar with the situation. So dogs and pigs and chickens - pretty much any animal that scavenges - will eat other animal's and human feces with seemingly little damage. I'm not sure if that means they're extra protected from any ill effects because they've evolved doing this, or if animals in general - other than humans - are simply more resistant to this type of disease transmission. It seems to me that a hell of a lot of epidemic diseases that kill so many people after natural disasters or in chronic conditions of extreme poverty are transmitted this way, but I may be wrong.
• you hit it on the head.....its not the shit that's making them sick: its the fact that it's shit from junkies............. That makes it a chemical reaction from the absorbed garbage - not a reaction to any parasitological phenomenon
• Doing some quick skimming of waterborne pathogen articles and papers, one thing that stands out is that people are exposed to a hell of a lot of water; we cook, we wash food, we bathe, we wash clothes, we irrigate fields. Your average dog is not going to be in or around that much water on a daily basis; their cleaning system is kept in-house. Maybe it's a matter of exposure to water rather than weakness to that mode of transmission?
• Water isnt even being close to being your problem (unless you are talking typhus or cholera)- in the western world the water that we are exposed to is so clean and sanitised it is a joke - again the human determination to prevent rather than allow natural immunity to occur - think about where your dog drinks from if u take him for a walk - muddy puddles dirty rivers - u'd be ill he isn't - u haven't had the chance to challenge the immune system ( mind u that is for me a good thing!) sorry u have me off on one of my pets - take the current panic over bird flu - read at least twenty articles and each will tell you that this is a recent 'crossover' between species - evolutionary equilibrium and the human distaste for anythin mildly 'dirty'!!!!!!!! Oh and more food for thought - immunity to diseases like smallpox is the result of mild exposure to similar diseases - u go do the elementary biological result!
• The average cat and dog is hardy because of hybrid vigour.
• In a mildly related story, a roommate of my secretary just received a package at his place of work containing human feces. Not sure if it was a fecalgram or not, but it sure as heck made an impression.
• 99 out of 100 E. coli's have no desire to cause disease.
• Rabbits have a digestion similar to horses, and are pretty fragile. There are a number of rabbit diseases that can't be cured outright, but require indefinite courses of antibiotics. On the other hand, they can get really nasty abscesses that antibiotics can't even touch. Plus, if they are feeling poorly their digestion might stop running, which could kill them. All this despite the fact that they, too, eat their own poo (by design). So I'd argue that humans have a few advantages, like the ability to regurgitate, and medicine that works most of the time.
• I am dismayed that a thread about "Totally Pussies" contains none. :(
• The average cat and dog is hardy because of hybrid vigour. Which is why I only fuck brown people.
• And why I only fuck brainy supermodels.
• If we licked our asses and didn't use antibacterial everything we would probably be more able to deal with some of the more common diseases. Wasn't polio only a problem once we stopped being exposed to animal feces on a regular basis? Or am I totally wrong? I'm probably wrong because for whatever reason my liberal arts education hasn't prepared me very well to discuss medicine...
• The solution is obvious. Humans need to start eating shit. Eventually we will evolve into invulnerable, unstoppable shit-eating machines, like dogs. Since I'm not going to have kids, I am exempt. The rest of you, tuck in.
• "Humans need to start eating shit"
• I remember a very interesting show on TV that showed children with debilitating eczema being treated with some form of tuberculosis being introduced to the body and severe Irritable Bowel Syndrome being treated by having patients swallow tapeworm eggs and allowing them to hatch and tapeworms to inhabit their digestive systems. The idea being that giving the body an ancient enemy that our systems had evolved with to attack rather than itself as happens in modern auto-immune disorders would be an improvement. Which, apparently, it was. The variant of TB introduced was controllable and the children's skin cleared while their immune system busied itself dealing with the TB. The tapeworms could be killed with medication at any time before their presence caused their host any harm, and in the meanwhile diverted the attack from the person's own bowels to the worm. Obviously though, it's a bit of a hard sell. I can't find any additional info through Google; anybody else see this or hear about it? I'm eternally grateful I was a farm kid - while I seem to get stuck with vague chronic stress-related illnesses, I've never had chicken pox, mumps, or measles, and have no vaccination mark from my smallpox shots; presumably I had no reaction? And I tend to get abbreviated versions of whatever cold or flu is going around; less severe, and of shorter duration than everybody else. That, and I have a cast iron stomach. All that filth and no running water was good for something.
• Actually it's pig whipworm that treats IBS, and isn't native enough to humans to be able to become a permanent parasite. I haven't heard of tapeworm being used for anything (except as fodder for urban legend diet fads).
• More info... pretty gross, but you have to hand it to those scientists.
• Humans need to start eating shit. Eventually we will evolve into invulnerable, unstoppable shit-eating machines, like dogs. Actually, eating shit is what got us to this point. By far the greatest Anthro movie ever, just for Raymond Dart's "rrrip up a belly!" Look for Lewis Binford's theories. I'm sure Homo habilis really appreciated all the McDonalds.
• have no vaccination mark from my smallpox shots Me either! I thought I was the only one! *lightly touches moneyjane's hand*
• img src="Divine" You're welcome
• Thank you rolypoly! It was also Crohn's in the show rather than IBS which is probably why my Googling wasn't panning out. And a little more grossness. I'd do it though - Crohn's Disease is horrible.
• Why do dogs and cats lick their butts? Because they can.
• Me either! I thought I was the only one! We are the Chosen Ones. Tell no-one else...and remember; "&&T%^^%TTR^".
• A little known story here (PDF, pg. 69) that has never made the Internet rounds: According to press reports, in February 1970 Eric Kranz, a postgraduate student in parasitology at MacDonald College, a small agricultural institute affiliated with McGill University and located near Montreal, Canada, contaminated food eaten by four of his roommates. Kranz was not getting along with his roommates, who asked him to leave the house they shared “because he wasn’t paying his share of the rent.” Some days after Kranz finally left the house, four of his five former roommates became seriously ill. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, the victims became sick from 10 to 14 days after eating the contaminated food, two of them suffering from acute respiratory failure.234 Initially, the illness mystified the attended physicians, who later told a reporter that the illness was life threatening. Examination of the victim’s sputum, however, revealed the presence of large numbers of worms, which a professor of parasitology at MacDonald College identified as Ascaris suum, a parasite found in pigs similar to one (Ascaris lumbricoides) that infects people. According to the attending physician, the victims could have died from the disease. They were not released from the hospital until March 5. Following discovery of the parasites, an arrest warrant was issued for Kranz charging him with attempted murder. He surrendered to police on March 10, and was tried on the charges on March 18. Ascaris suum are these nasty things. A guy I used to work with loved telling gross stories, and this was one of them. I was surprised to find he was right.
• Mj, Koko...Smallpox vaccinations stopped in 1972 in the US and Canada. That might explain the lack of a scar, depending on your age, of course. Or you could be the Chosen Ones after all.
• chosen by the monkeys, natch
• I am not only a Chosen One but also A Justified Ancient of Mu Mu, so I definitely got one. My maternal grandfather was in China as a child as his parents were missionaries and he didn't react to his smallpox vaccinations either. I've always wondered what that meant; wouldn't it mean you were already immune, and so the smallpox didn't make its one pockmark scar?
• I'm wondering how much pollution compromises our immune systems. You hear about "sick" buildings, that new car smell is not good for you, carpet fumes are said to be toxic--all the chemical exposure has to be taking great wacks at our immune system and lowering our tolerance levels. I don't think we have incurred any significant losses to our natural pathogen defense Actually, we haven't. If you stop and think about it, humans have only been "clean freaks" for the last 150 years. Not enough time in the evolutionary scale to really change anything genetically. As far as the ultimate parasite goes, a successful parasite only has to allow the host to last long enough to reproduce. After that, it no longer matters if the individual host suscumbs to a parasitic infection, things are cool for the parasite. The thing is to remember that individuals of a species are of no concern, it's the genes and the next generation that matters. Out of all the nasty viruses, BSE is a pretty successful virus--cows generally can last up to six-seven years--long enough to breed and calve several times before croaking, and the virus is easily transmitted into other species--humans, dogs, cats, rats. /subject randomizing hmmmm, I for one welcome our new virus leaders.
• Here's some folks who've tested the hardiness factor; and did pretty good until they returned to civilization.
• I think its our sterilised living that makes us susceptible to diseases. I have some anecdotal evidence to back this up. Im a water engineer and was working on the isle of Arran off Scotland. We were laying a new water main near a little community. And they were concerned that our pipelaying would disrupt their "wonderful" natural spring. Sure enough it did. When we tried to find the spring to recapture it we discovered that their spring was in fact a field drain in a field full of cows. A quick sample proved that it was chock full of e-coli yet they'd been drinking it for years with no ill effects. Oh yeah their tomatoes were excellent too, must have been all that natural fertiliser in the water.
• Hey, following up on the ant parasite story, check out this one.

  a parasite that infects the brains of rats without any effect on their behavior except that they lose their instinctual aversion to the smell of cats and, instead, are drawn to it. Needless to say, such absurdly obliging prey is quickly gobbled up: bad for the rat but great for the parasite, since it can only reproduce inside a cat host. The next generation hitches a ride out on the cat's feces, which are ingested by rats to start the cycle over again. "This is flabbergasting," Sapolsky writes. "This is like someone getting infected with a brain parasite that has no effect whatsoever on the person's thoughts, emotions, S.A.T. scores or television preferences, but, to complete its life cycle, generates an irresistible urge to go to the zoo, scale a fence, and French-kiss" the meanest-looking polar bear.

  here
• Re: the smallpox scar, or lack thereof, do you have the kind of skin that doesn't scar easily? I do, even surgical scars and quite heinous cuts fade to faint white lines within a year or two. I can't find the scar on my arm from the smallpox innoculation either. My mother confirms that I had it, and I remember seeing some pretty nasty scars on the other kids' arms in elementary school. I do have a teeny-tiny puckered spot about 1/8 of an inch in diameter that might be it, but it can only be seen in really, really good light. It might well be a figment of my imagination.
• BSE's not a virus but a prion. And E. Coli is generally harmless. Heck, we're chock full of it. Remember: poop doesn't sicken people, sick poop sickens people. This comment brought to you by the International League of Pedants.
• Crap! Frac, thanks for the clear-up on that one. I KNEW it was a prion, (and thus can't be deactivated by cooking) I just had one of those spongiform moments!
• Now if I was really in fine pedantic fettle I'd've said "BSE's not caused by a virus but by a prion." Since BSE's a disease. Oh well.
• ... E. Coli is generally harmless. True. I should have specified E. coli 0157:H7. It is a bad, bad beast.
• But dead sexy. If there's a bacterium you'd want to stroke seductively, that there's your man.
• Nah, animals get sick all the time. They get sick at least as often as we do. Name any given animal, and I could probably tell you at least a dozen afflictions it's prone to. (I've had a lot of pets.) Some of these are illnesses which are specific to the animal. Cats get ear mites (except for that one very dedicated veterinary researcher), feline leukemia (I miss you, Frankie), feline AIDS. Dogs get kennel cough and parvo. Rats, rabbits, and horses all get colic. Horses get thrush. Fish get ich. Birds get that weird sneezing problem, the name of which escapes me at the moment. Urban pigeons get that weird thing that makes them all greasy (what's the deal with that, anyway?). Some illnesses we can share with our four-legged brethren. Giardia, anthrax, ebola, hantavirus, tuberculosis, hansen's disease, tinea (a.k.a. athlete's foot). tapeworm, pinworms, bubonic plague, some variants of the flu virus, BSE, cowpox, malaria, rabies... oh my, the list goes on. It's a dangerous world out there. Lucky for us, though, we have the antibiotics to cure a lot of it.
• Name any given animal, and I could probably tell you at least a dozen afflictions it's prone to. Weevil. Your time starts NOW, motherfucker!
• Weevils get weevils! 2) Weevilitis 3) Weevil whooping cough 4) Weevies 5) Weaver's Disease 6) Weevil squiggly eye syndrome 7) The Heebie Jeebies 8) St' Vitus' Dance 9) Osteoporosis 10) Lou Gherig's Weevil Disease 11) Orange-you-glad-I didn't-say-bananaitis 12) Yeast Infections Time?
• Damn - you're good!
• Not to mention infested.