Researchers: Wolves Might Slow Spread of CWD 72
William G. Davis writes "According to this AP article, researchers are now suggesting that wolves might be able to slow the spread of chronic wasting disease (CWD) in deer. Chronic wasting disease is the name commonly given to spongiform encephalopathy (prion disease) in deer and elk (basically, mad cow disease in deer). The article explains how wolves typically look for weaknesses in their prey, and since prion disease causes that, wolves might target the sick animals. One has to wonder, though, about the potential ramifications of having dangerous predators exposed to this brain-wasting illness, and what type of 'unusual behavior' they'll start to exhibit."
Dangerous? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dangerous? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Dangerous? (Score:5, Informative)
Quote from Here [guthriecenter.com] Vultures have long been perceived as loathsome birds because of their feeding habits. We now know the important role these birds play by cleaning up dead animals. The Latin name Cathartes aura means "Golden purifier". Turkey Vultures are immune to botulism, anthrax bacteria, hog cholera virus and many, many more that would kill other animals as well as us. Vultures were once blamed for spreading diseases. Scientific research has shown that their digestive tract and immune system actually destroy all pathogens and help to control these diseases. Ongoing research in the medical field on the Turkey Vulture's amazing immune system may some day yield valuable information that could be applied to humans as well as livestock.
However... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:However... (Score:1)
Re:However... (Score:3, Informative)
I think they're an example of a self sustaining molecule - one that catalyzes the creation of itself from another molecule.
Re:However... (Score:1)
Re:However... (Score:2)
That's probably the best way to look at it. It's just like Vonnegut's ice-nine, except it works on a particular mammalian brain protein instead of water.
Infective particles pass through 30 nm filters and survive immersion for long periods of time in formaldehyde. They are relatively impervious to radiation and can survive the heat of a rendering plant. Unlike the normal protein, the
Re:However... (Score:2)
I don't know what I'd ever do with my Friday nights if they ever discovered a case of mad bar disease
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Re:Dangerous? (Score:1)
Re:Dangerous? (Score:2)
Turkey Vulture! It's not just for Thanksgiving anymore!
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Re:Dangerous? (Score:1)
Although a glow-in-the-dark Turkey Vulture would be the ultimate.
Re:Dangerous? (Score:2)
Re:Dangerous? (Score:5, Interesting)
True. And there's lots of literature supporting the idea that predators and scavengers tend to have very good defenses against the diseases that affect their prey. Part of the defenses are powerful digestive systems that leave few cells intact and chop up most proteins and DNA into small pieces. They also have some of the best immune systems on the planet.
The explanation is fairly simple. If you're a predator or scavenger, you often eat food that was weakened or killed by disease. This puts strong selective pressure on your species in favor of defenses against those diseases.
I've read a couple of articles on the semi-exception that the top predator on the planet (Homo sap) seems to be a partial exception. This is generally explained as an artifact of our recent conversion to predation. We do have some predator adaptations, but we haven't had time to evolve them fully.
There is a bit of debate about this, though. For example, studies of wild chimp populations haved turned up data showing that they actually do get a significant part of their protein by eating small animals. So our predatory ancestry probably goes back at least 5 million years. But still, we are primates, and it wasn't all that long ago that our ancestors were vegetarians.
BS (Score:1)
Re:BS (Score:3, Informative)
Well, strictly speaking, you're right. Most primates get a small amount of their protein by eating small animals, mostly insects. But this doesn't make them predators. In general, primates get most of their calories from plants, and have few if any adaptations for predation. They're more properly classified as omnivores.
Similarly, cattle and other grazing animals inevitably eat a small quantity of insect, snails, etc that are mixed in with the herbs. But this doesn't make
Re:BS (Score:1)
Sure does, if you are a snail.
Re:Dangerous? (Score:4, Interesting)
One bite from a Komodo and it's saliva introduces all of these infections at once. A bite victim almost inevitably dies within one to three days. No known antibiotic can cure an established infection.
The exciting part of the story is that Komodo Dragons obviously must have evolved an amazingly powerful defense to all of these bacteria. An expedition was sent to collect some Komodo blood and work is ongoing. They have isolated multiple anti-bacterial compounds and hopefully they will be able to make incredibly powerful new antibiotics available in a few years.
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Dragon antibiotics... (Score:1)
Yeah, but some incredibly powerful antibiotic that a Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis) can handle may be quite deadly to us humans... Komodo dragons aren't all that closely related to us, you know (for one, they're cold-blooded).
Re:Dangerous? (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a much more simple explanation.
Our immune systems are poor because they don't get enough stimuli when we are in childhood. Modern medicine takes care of most of our illnesses so our own immune system d
Re:Dangerous? (Score:3, Interesting)
That estimate is based on the false assumption that any trait present in modern chimps was also present in the common ancestor of chimps and humans. Chimps have evolved as much in the last 5 million years as we have. They may have discovered hunting as recently as we did - it's even pos
Immune system is irrelevant (Score:3, Insightful)
You can have the strongest immune system of any known mammal or bird and it will not protect you from prion diseases like spongiform encephalopathies. There i
Re:Dangerous? (Score:2)
It might also be explained by the fact that, alone (AFAIK) among the predators/omnivores, humans cook most of the meat that they eat. Cooking effectively kills most food-borne pathogens. This would go a long way toward preventing food-borne illnesses, and might explain the relatively poor defe
Re:Dangerous? (Score:2)
Pure FUD (Score:5, Informative)
Had the submitter actually read up on CWD, they'd have learned that it's already present in areas where there are wild wolves, and that there's no sign of the wolf population contracting it.
As well, in tests that involved feeding infected brains to live stock, none of the livestock showed any signs of contracting CWD. The only time they've had sucess with transmitting the disease outside of deer and elk is by atricicial means, as in, directly injecting it into the brain.
So the wolves should be safe enough.
Re:Pure FUD (Score:2)
As for not figuring out how it's transmitted, that's kinda worrisome, don't you think? This disease is hitting herds of animals and even after a few years of observation we can't tell how it's transmitted?
Re:Pure FUD (Score:2)
What are you talking about? Your parent poster told you how it's transmitted: the deer are injecting each other's brains directly with syringes.
Re:Pure FUD (Score:1)
1-Kill the potential carriers. ALL of them, as many as can be found, reducing populations so drastically that it'll take 30-40 years for numbers to come back up, giving plenty of time for the disease to run its course in the one or two surviving carriers. Naturally,
Re:Pure FUD (Score:3, Interesting)
Curing
mod parent down (Score:2)
Had the parent RTFA, they'd have read that CWD has not been found in areas near wolves, and that's why nobody knows what's going to happen. To quote:
No one has been able to study whether wolves single out CWD-infected animals because the range of predator and disease have never overlapped.
Re:mod parent down (Score:1)
And guess what? We've also go wolves, who are well known to feed on the local elk.
While I know that in the area talked about in the article the wolves have not interacted with the deer and elk, but there's other places where they have, in places where the wolf population hasn't been wiped out.
Re:mod parent down (Score:2)
Brain tissue? (Score:3, Interesting)
I had understood that "Mad Cow" is only transmitted by eating the brains of an infected animal. Ranched cattle would acquire it as they are sometimes feed the brains of previously slaughtered cattle, but how exactly do deer and other wildlife transmit it?
Is there another transmission vector, or do deer etc in fact eat the brains of their own dead?
Re:Brain tissue? (Score:2)
Presumably this means it's substantially more transmissible than Mad Cow Disease because it accumulates in other tissues outside of the brain and central nervous system. Or it means they are lying to us about the possible transmission vectors for Mad Cow Disease and that BS
Re:Brain tissue? (Score:2)
Or it means they are lying to us about the possible transmission vectors for Mad Cow Disease and that BSE can possibly be transmitted through vectors besides brain tissue.
That's exactly what I'm worried about as well. And from your link:
We know that Mad Cow Disease can be transmitted to humans. Chornic Wasting Disease is similar to Mad Cow Disease; however, there has been NO documented evidence to date that it can be transmitted to humans by ingestion of infected meat.
That unfortunately makes it as
Re:Brain tissue? (Score:2, Interesting)
I live in Colorado, in an area were there are a lot of Elk Ranches (Yes, they do exist). CWD is covered fairly regularly by the local papers when they don't have enough fluff to fill the space
Basically, no one has caught CWD as far as they can tell, yet. They really have no clue if it's possible, but there are a few cases here in Colorado where people have gotten Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and have eaten wild elk. CJ disease is what humans get from mad cow. It is of course possible they got it from some ot
Not eating but _injecting_ ... (Score:2)
Re:Brain tissue? (Score:2)
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Cthulhu
I think we may have just figured out is triggering the outbreak.
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What mystery (Score:3, Interesting)
Keep in mind that chicken and pork feed use ground up animal protein, including brains of down animals. All approved by the USDA. It is just cattle feed that is not supposed to contain animal protein. In fact in the Washington casem, i would bet that the cow in question at one time dined on swine feed.
Large numbers of dear and elk cont
Re:Brain tissue? (Score:2)
The stuff is persistent. It can stick around on surfaces for a long time. And it survives harsh environments. Surgical implements remain infective for prion diseases even after being autoclaved and sterilized with heat and chemicals.
Scrapie, for example, is a prion disease of sheep. Farms in Iceland that had not had any sheep present at all for thr
Chronic Wasting vs Mad Cow Disease (Score:2, Informative)
Sounded like people link these two diseases is that the end result looks the same. Chronic wasting disease is a muscle problem, Mad Cow disease is a deterioration of the brain. Both end up the same with a weak animal that can't walk.
Chronic Wasting disease is probably more of a problem brought on by the overpopulation of deer in the upper midwest than anything. Wolves
Re:Chronic Wasting vs Mad Cow Disease (Score:1)
Sorry TykeClone.. From the article (Score:1)
I think that clears that up.
Mod Parent down - Bad info. (Score:1)
Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) is a transmissible neurological disease of deer and elk that produces small lesions in brains of infected animals. It is characterized by loss of body condition, behavioral abnormalities and death. CWD is classified as a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE), and is similar to mad cow disease in cattle and scrapie in sheep.
Re:Mod Parent down - Bad info. (Score:2)
I sure could go for a burrito right now...
Re:Chronic Wasting vs Mad Cow Disease (Score:2)
Wolves (and other predators) will benefit until the deer are brought into a more sane population - then they'll turn on people.
Has somebody been reading too much Little Red Riding Hood? Wolves pose little to no danger to humans and if given the opportunity and not harassed will go out of their way to avoid us. The vast majority of wildlife encounters result from people hiking and camping doing stupid things like feeding wild animals, leaving out food, toothpaste, human w
Enough Speculation! (Score:1)
Fact: Any Predator will zero in on weak prey.
Fact: Wolves are not particularly dangerous to humans.
Fact: Wolves have been exposed to more mind altering diseases than CWD, ie. Rabies for much longer than we have even known about CWD, much less tracked it.
Fact: CWD does not cause the animals to go "MAD" or attack others.
David Mech, a biologist with the U.S. Geologic Survey and a wolf expert, cautioned that until wolves and wasting disease actually interact, theori
Re:Enough Speculation! (Score:1)
Fact: Any Predator will zero in on weak prey.
When did I say anything to the contrary? Did you actually read my synopsis?
Fact: Wolves are not particularly dangerous to humans.
And neither are black bears, mountain lions, and many other predators indigenous to this continent. What's your point? Would you walk up to them and pet them? They're still dangerous none the less.
Fact: Wolves have been exposed to more mind altering diseases than CWD, ie. Rabies for much longer than we have even known about
Re:Enough Speculation! (Score:1)
Should be "from species to species".
Re:Enough Speculation! (Score:1)
My point is that the above phrasing was incredibly sensational. It implies that suddenly we will have packs of "mad wolves" ravaging the countryside.
As you already stated wolves are no more "dangerous" than the black bears, mountain lions, and many other predators indigenous to this continent. What's your point?
Re:Enough Speculation! (Score:1)
My point is that the above phrasing was incredibly sensational. It implies that suddenly we will have packs of "mad wolves" ravaging the countryside.
As you already stated wolves are no more "dangerous" than the black bears, mountain lions, and many other predators indigenous to this continent. What's your point?
That perhaps repopulating wolves for the sole purpose of exposing them to this neurodegenerative disease will have some unfortunate consequences. The article never addressed the possibility that
Re:Enough Speculation! (Score:1)
Wolves as Dangerous Predators (Score:4, Insightful)
Mad Wolf Disease would not cause this situation so much as make the wolf infirm and eventually dead. You're not going to have sudden blood-lusted and violent wolves. You're going to have very dead wolves who can't function.
Meanwhile, absurd paranoia like this will lead to an incrase in programs like the one they're trying really hard to put into place in Alaska, whereby they will slaughter all wolves in a given area with a 100 mile radius. By shooting them from helicopters. And sometimes, by chasing them via helicopter to the point of exhaustion, and then shooting them. Because apparently the helicopter and machine gun aren't enough on their own.
Short form - the "wolves are dangerous" myth is both ignorant and destructive, and whoever submitted this article (As well as whoever approved it) should be ashamed - spreading crap like this on as widely read a site as
Re:Wolves as Dangerous Predators (Score:3, Informative)
His findings, in short: Human beings were responsible for the enormous drop in Caribou numbers by indiscriminate hunting. The n
Re:Wolves as Dangerous Predators (Score:1)
Wow. I never suggested that wolves were extremely dangerous, baby-eating monsters that needed to be eradicated. I used one word, "dangerous," to accurately describe an animal that can hurt humans, as opposed to, say, a Caribou or a Pronghorn or a Squirrel.
You suggest that a mad wolf disease would not really result in unusually violent behavior, but this is not the case in other animals. Animals suffering from some kind of spongiform encephalopathy often undergo dramatic changes in their personality and di
Mad cow book (Score:1, Informative)
Dogs, horses and rabbits.... (Score:2)
> potential ramifications of having dangerous
> predators exposed to this brain-wasting
> illness, and what type of 'unusual behavior'
> they'll start to exhibit."
Dogs (including wolves), horses, and rabbits
are notably resistant to TSE prion diseases.
Nobody knows why, yet.
Re:Dogs, horses and rabbits.... (Score:2)
Re:Dogs, horses and rabbits.... (Score:2)
darn farmers (Score:1)
this is one of the arguments in favor of the 7 main Idaho packs and numerous Yellowstone packs that could protect them.
there are also a lot of hunters here that would rather have untainted game. letting the packs run wild, as they should be, could very well help hunting in this state, rather than hurt it as the farmers would have you believe.
(sadly enough, the farmers' 3 main arguments
brain-wasted predators (Score:1)
Experience suggests that they will probably do something like launch a series of groundless IP lawsuits against the open source community.
If you don't have predators, diseases fill in (Score:2)
The deer and rodents were completely out of control. IT was great for deer hunting, but everyone in the family contracted Lyme disease. The ticks there were unbelievable.
Then the western coyote made to that region of the country and swam to the island (an impressive feat). In one season they reduced the deer herd to a manageable size and then turned to the voles and other small rode
the first thang that came to mind.. (Score:1)
"One has to wonder, though, about the potential ramifications of having dangerous predators exposed to this brain-wasting illness, and what type of 'unusual behavior' they'll start to exhibit."
was.. WEREWOLVES! Run for the hills! ;)