Tag / parasites

by Roslyn

Nest in the city

One of the most incredible things about peafowl is how well these birds thrive in the suburbs. There were hundreds in Arcadia, CA, where I studied them, and every once in a while I hear about some other town where they’ve taken over – Orange County, Palos Verdes, Miami – they even disperse and occasionally pop up somewhere new (like here, or here). I’ve been told that in India (where the species is originally from), flocks also tend to settle down in villages. (And the name for a group of peafowl? A muster!) And peacocks are now on the cover of a book on urban birds1.

So what makes peafowl so much better at urban living than other, similar species?

It could be that they’re catholic about their diets, or that they’re tolerant of a broad range of environmental conditions2. Other research has suggested that, in mammals at least, successful invaders tend to have relatively large brains3 – possibly because a large brain confers the ability to respond flexibly to new situations. American crows fit this theory, as an urban success story with relatively large brains. But peafowl are some of the smallest brained birds out there, when you consider brain size relative to body size – and pigeons, starling and house sparrows aren’t particularly well-endowed, either. So what if it has more to do with how they use their brains to adapt?

A new study points to an intriguing benefit of city life for some birds, and it has me wondering about learning as a mode of urban adaptation. Apparently, some urban birds use cigarette butts to build their nests – and researchers have now shown that the cigarette butts actually improve the living conditions for young birds.

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by Roslyn

I can haz toxoplasmosis

In which you will learn why online cats are so attractive, and discover a new way to lose hours to the internet.

First, the cats. Charlie and I were hashing out the finer points of Facebook, memes and internet superstars, when, in frustration, I brought up his most hated animal.

“Look. Cute baby videos and LOLcats are popular because people send links to their friends. Nobody sits down and says, ‘Well it’s quarter to 10, the same time I always drink my coffee and look for the latest cute cat photos on the–’ ”

Self defeat and laughter mid-sentence, when I remembered living with my friend Jessica in Toronto. She had a brutal job in psychiatric research north of the city. After a hard day, that was exactly what she did. Nothing cheered this woman up like online cat research.

Felis catus is a polarizing species. Some people despise them. Ancient Egyptians and cat ladies have made a religion out of them. The story goes that wild cats were first domesticated in ancient Egypt for useful things like keeping rats out of grain stores and killing poisonous snakes, but this might be more myth than reality. Cats were probably kept around as tame rat-catchers much earlier, certainly before recorded history, and very likely around the beginning of agriculture itself. People were depicting cats on pottery 10,000 years ago1. Cyprus can boast the first Stone Age cat lover. A 9,500 year old burial site on the island is the earliest evidence of humans bonding with these animals, since a cat was intentionally buried alongside a human body there2. The fact that the cat was not butchered, and the inclusion of decorative seashells and stones in the grave, prove that cats had achieved cultural importance beyond their agricultural utility back then.

European wildcat

The European wildcat Felis silvestris is a close relative of the earliest domesticated species. Photo by Péter Csonka from Wikimedia Commons.

But could the cat haters be right – is there something off about feline love? After all, cats aren’t really that useful, at least not when compared to dogs. Dog people might be pleased to hear that when you consider all living and extinct canid and felid species, dogs have bigger brains than cats – probably because they tend to be the more social animals3. Indeed, dogs adapted readily in response to domestication, evolving a number of cognitive abilities that make them particularly good at understanding human gestures – much better, even, than chimpanzees4. Naïve 4-month old puppies will quickly learn what it means when a human points, without any training or close contact with humans beforehand5. Cats can do this too, but they require a lot more effort to learn how6. Dogs can detect certain forms of cancer in humans by smell, and they are often the first ones to notice that something is wrong with their owners7. I have yet to find any high profile studies on feline pathologists. Which raises the question: if cats could do it, would they care enough to try?

And in a bizarre twist, there’s reason to think that our magnetic attraction to cats might be the result of a real parasitic disease.

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by Roslyn

You are what you feed

What makes you you?

The problem of identity – and its flip-side, change – has been vexing philosophers ever since the discipline got started in ancient Greece. As early as 500 years BC, Heraclitus was musing about the ever-changing nature of a flowing river, recorded by his contemporary Plato with the enduring line, “You cannot step in the same river twice.”

This issue comes up everywhere. In an astronomy course I took at university, the professor gave us a mind-boggling assignment: calculate the number of atoms in your body that were once part of a living dinosaur. The answer was a lot, and though I don’t recall the exact number, the question could have just as easily been about sharing atoms with Heraclitus, or Plato, for that matter. The point is that most of the molecules in our bodies are being replaced and recycled, all of the time1. Like a flowing river, you are literally not the same bag of stuff that you were last year, or even last week; although a more accurate way to put it might be that you are a bag of somewhat different stuff than you contained before.

This raises a tough question. If a different collection of matter can be the same person, how much has to change before you aren’t yourself anymore? The implications are nearer than you might think. Organ transplants, bionic limbs and electronic implants – including devices implanted in the brain – are all within the range of current medicine. How much of a person’s body can we replace and still consider them to be the same person?

I don’t have the answer, and I’m not sure anyone ever will, although some would argue that it is a mistake to assume that there is anything like a constant “you” in the first place. For example, the philosopher Daniel Dennett contends that the idea of a continuous self is really just an illusion produced by the brain2.

Biology has a thing or two to say about the matter. It turns out that part of what makes you you is other species. Specifically, the ones living inside you: the veritable ecosystem of bacteria and other microscopic organisms inside your gut. Evidence is mounting that the microcosm within is an important part of who we are: it provides a unique signature of individuality. It can also determine future health. It might even be part of what defines us as human, since a new study shows that as we evolved from ape ancestors, so did our inner ecosystems3.

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