Richard Spencer in front of the Lincoln Memorial All images: Bryan Menegus & Sophie Kleeman/Gizmodo We were promised a showdown at high noon. Instead, Washington DC. Requests from our missionaries around the globe reach my desk every day. I am hoping and praying that we can send these missionaries the funds they need. Many needy. Get the latest science news and technology news, read tech reviews and more at ABC News. Actually, Cannibalism Can Be Good. Sometimes, we humans let our dumb values prevent us from taking biological realities seriously. Take pooping, for example: People have decided pooping is gross, even though it’s a thing that most of us do literally every day. Now, some scientists think that even cannibalism is worth another hard look. Cannibalism naturally occurs in lots of species of insects, fish, and even mammals. And despite our aversion to it as a so- called “civilized” species, cannibalism seems to serve a purpose. A team led by UC San Diego researcher Benjamin Van Allen reviewed past research on cannibalism and came to the conclusion that it might help to limit disease spread in some populations.“We’ve been looking at cannibals individually,” instead of cannibalism’s effects on entire species, study co- author Bret Elderd from Louisiana State University told Gizmodo. But they also can carry the exact pathogens that can get you sick. Still, diseases don’t have perfect transmission rates, and there’s no guarantee a cannibal will get sick from eating a sick relative. The team looked at lots of past research on certain diseases in several different species of insects, fish, and frogs. The fall armyworm, for example, can suffer from a specific virus that prevents it from growing larger, making it look like a tasty snack to a healthy caterpillar. But if healthy caterpillars are eating sick ones, it begs a question: will the species succumb to the disease, or will fewer hosts help the population to prevail? On reviewing the literature and after conducting experiments, the researchers found that cannibalism can actually reduce the prevalence of a pathogen in a species. But this is not necessarily true. In communities where multiple individuals feast on the same diseased corpse, the population could instead succumb, due to the number of infections being greater than the number of infected hosts eaten. The team published their work in The American Naturalist journal. I sent the paper to a few researchers who said it was interesting, but did not have time to send specific comments—I will update the post when I hear back. Elderd thinks that knowledge of the benefits of cannibalism to a population could help people deal with things like pest outbreaks. The fall armyworm, for example, is a pest both in the United States and Africa. But “cannibalism can have potentially broad scale applications and impacts on biocontrol,” he said. However, Elderd would like people to take another critical look at how cannibalism works in nature. It might yield some important scientific insights.
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August 2017
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