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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsInfectious Selflessness: How an Ant Colony Becomes a Social Immune System
In the 2011 blockbuster thriller Contagion, a virus infects and kills 26 million people around the world. But even those who evade the virus are infected with something else: crippling fear. To contain the outbreak, the military imposes a quarantine. People stay indoors, refusing to interact with anyone outside their families. Touching anyone or anything becomes a risk, because the virus lingers everywhere.
Ants do things differently. When a deadly fungus infects an ant colony, the healthy insects do not necessarily ostracize their sick nest mates. Instead, they welcome the contagious with open armsor, rather, open mouthsoften licking their neighbors to remove the fungal spores before the pathogens sprout and grow. Apparently, such grooming dilutes the infection, spreading it thinly across the colony. Instead of leaving their infected peers to deal with the infection on their own and die, healthy ants share the burden, deliberately infecting everyone in the colony with a tiny dose of fungus that each individual's immune system can clear on its own. Such "social immunization" also primes the immune systems of healthy ants to battle the infection. These are the conclusions of a new study in the April 3 issue of PLoS Biology.
Link - http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ants-social-immune-system
killbotfactory
(13,566 posts)Fascinating.
Lionessa
(3,894 posts)I don't think it diminished the response to the virus, but it was the way we made sure the kids got it early in life rather than the much more painful and disruptive later in life.
Unfortunately I assumed I had them as a child and apparently hadn't. So at 30+ years old I had chicken pox in places too many and too personal to discuss. The kids maybe two dozen cysts, me...hundreds.
Anyway, it usually worked well for most to have that as children rather than adults so we sent ours down to get infected. I understand they have a vaccine for this now.
BlueMTexpat
(15,349 posts)When I got chicken pox (I am the oldest of five), Mom packed the lot of us up and we went to spend the time with one of our aunts and three cousins until all of us had lived through it. All of us kids suffered through the infection at the same time and got it out of the way, both moms had each other as support systems and because it was always a treat to visit our cousins, our morale was good even though we weren't feeling that well. I'll never forget how my back itched then; my older cousins and I were among the older kids and we had the worst of it.
Those days were different though. Everyone assumed that we'd all get the minor childhood diseases at some time or another when we were young, so they tried to get them over with and get our own immune systems developed. There was a general consensus that everyone should have them while a child because everyone "knew" that they were much more serious when one was an adult without previous exposure. But people didn't realize in those days how an unborn fetus could also be damaged. Fortunately, that did not happen in our experience. Other than the required vaccinations, there was also a lot less reliance on doctors and pharmaceuticals then. Our major medications were aspirin (yes, the real thing) and Vicks Vaporub and that's about it. Antibiotics (mainly penicillin) were used very sparingly and were considered a big deal. Fortunately, we were basically healthy with none of the then-more esoteric diseases that seem to abound today. All of us survived childhood and so have our own children, all also healthy, thank heavens.
Both moms were stay-at-home moms then although my mother worked outside the home when we were all older and, even though our families were some 70+ miles apart, the family support system was excellent. In an area where one has a good support system among friends if family is unavailable, similar systems could be worked out. Today, the idea seems to be to prevent the infections from even getting started. That works fine, I guess, except for those people who refuse to vaccinate their children and then inadvertently cause harm to the unborn or to previously unexposed adults.
It's interesting that the Pro-Birth people haven't decided to charge such people with a crime because their ill-advised actions do harm the unborn. But then P-Bers are often the same people who refuse to vaccinate.
DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)K&R
OffWithTheirHeads
(10,337 posts)in sterile environments that it may be better to let them stick crap in their mouths, etc. that, in my opinion, it's better to let them get dirty on occasion and develop antibodies or whatever rather than trying to protect them from everything.
Now I see people wiping down shopping cart handles with stuff like that's going to protect them from humanity. Might as well try to disinfect everything you bring home too cause I often see folks who feel the need to touch every Goddamn vegetable in the bin before they pick one.
It's O.K. to get a little sick. It helps prevent getting alot sick. You cannot live in a sterile bubble!
crunch60
(1,412 posts)insects was called " The soul of the White Ant" by Eugene Marias. (termite) They were the world's first Architects. I bought the book in So. Africa when I lived there in the 70's. We could learn a thing or two from these incredible insects.
snip-The soldier ant is armed with the first hypodermic syringe made by nature, which she eventually perfected in the poison fangs of the adder. In his polished head the termite soldier carries a little flask of poison.and on his forehead a needle-like tube through which the sticky fluid is squirted. He uses his weapon only against threatening enemies or strangers. The worker has strong, well-made jaws and a glue-producing gland which he uses to construct most complicated building operations. As soon as he has reached adult stature he begins to make gardens, care for and feed the king and queen, tend the hatching eggs, carry food and partially digest it for the benefit of the whole republic. Both these insects are totally blind, neither of them possesses eyes or other organs of sense; nevertheless they are aware of the presence or absence of light through twenty-four inches of compact earth.
Read more at link
http://www.soilandhealth.org/03sov/0302hsted/030213marais/the%20soul%20of%20the%20white%20ant%20-%20marais%20-%20toc.htm