08-20-2010, 08:34 AM
Something similar happens with fish.
There's a parasitic fluke that spends the 3 different portion of it's life cycle in three different animals: snails, fish and birds. The fish eats the snail, the bird eat the fish, the bird poops out the fluke which gets eaten by the snail.
They've discovered that the fluke gets into the fishes brain and makes it act crazy. The infected fish go to the surface of the water and flash around, making them more likely to get eaten by birds, which ensures the fluke catches the express bus to his next stop.
Pretty nutty.
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19129105">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19129105</a><!-- m -->
There's a parasitic fluke that spends the 3 different portion of it's life cycle in three different animals: snails, fish and birds. The fish eats the snail, the bird eat the fish, the bird poops out the fluke which gets eaten by the snail.
They've discovered that the fluke gets into the fishes brain and makes it act crazy. The infected fish go to the surface of the water and flash around, making them more likely to get eaten by birds, which ensures the fluke catches the express bus to his next stop.
Pretty nutty.
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19129105">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19129105</a><!-- m -->