Aug 25, 2020 05:38 AM
(This post was last modified: Aug 25, 2020 06:07 AM by C C.)
Scientists are searching space for extraterrestrial viruses
https://massivesci.com/articles/extrater...irus-nasa/
EXCERPT: . . . Viruses, while not technically “alive”, vastly outnumber all living organisms on our planet tenfold. There are an estimated 10^31 viruses on Earth - if every virus on Earth were lined up end to end, that line would extend 100 million light years. And as evidenced by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, they can dramatically influence life on Earth. But extraterrestrial viruses have not traditionally been a major search target in astrobiology. “We haven’t looked for [extraterrestrial] viruses specifically before because we’ve just barely started to scratch the surface of understanding them on Earth ... Previous to now, the technology and the know-how and the understanding of viruses hasn’t been at a point that we could really extrapolate that to other planetary bodies.”
Astrobiologists are only now beginning to incorporate knowledge of viruses into the growing body of knowledge about life’s origin, evolution, and distribution in the cosmos. Over the years, astrobiology has been a key component of investigating life’s history: by researching the conditions that may resemble early Earth or be found on other planets, scientists can investigate the environmental conditions that may have led to the development of life. [...] Adding viruses to the docket of targets in the search for extraterrestrial life would probably not even require a major shift in instrumentation or technology, says Bywaters. Technologies intended for use on spacecraft are currently being developed to analyze long-chain polymers such as DNA and RNA and would be capable of detecting living cells, viruses, and even non-conventional life forms different from what we would see on Earth.
To say that viruses have a bad reputation among humans would be an understatement. [...] Although some viral strains have massive impacts on human health, the vast majority of viruses only infect microbes. ... astrovirology can assist in “changing the mentality of the general populace that viruses don’t have to have this negative connotation,” as they are not always “these evil little things that destroy the world.” ... viruses are “critical for life on Earth as we know it - and maybe off Earth too.” Astrovirology can help scientists continue to learn about viruses on Earth: along with searching for extraterrestrial viruses, the field could provide insight into how viruses helped shape life’s origin and evolution, since viruses emerged early in the evolution of life on Earth. Additionally, it can lead towards better understanding the roles that viruses play here on Earth, “particularly early Earth and extraterrestrial analog ecosystems...” (MORE -details)
Did eating human poop play a role in the evolution of dogs?
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/...ution-dogs
EXCERPTS: . . . Ben Hart and his colleagues at the University of California at Davis School of Veterinary Medicine surveyed nearly 3,000 dog owners about their pet’s penchant for poop. Twenty-three percent of the owners had observed their dog eating feces, and 16 percent said their dogs did so frequently. Not surprisingly, many owners were grossed out by their pet’s dietary preferences. More than 900 of them had purchased at least one of the 11 commercial products that purport to reduce canine coprophagia. (None of them, unfortunately, worked.)
Hart and his colleagues hypothesize that canine feces-eating is essentially an obsolete trait that modern dogs inherited from their ancestors, grey wolves. They argued that the consumption of feces by wolves was an evolved adaptation that served to eliminate a major source of intestinal parasites near their dens. But [...others...] suggest that feces-eating may also have played an additional role in the evolution of dogs.
The anti-parasite hypothesis makes sense, but it does not explain why, when given the opportunity, dogs eat human feces. [...] One of the most widely accepted theories of dog evolution is the scavenger hypothesis ... Along with settlements came garbage dumps. ... wolves that were more temperamentally tolerant of being around humans would have more access to an abundant new food supply. ... This self-domestication strategy was successful. There are now a billion dogs on Earth compared to 300,000 wolves.
But what did these early wolf-dogs eat? [...] the scavenger/garbage dump hypothesis can’t be the whole story. The emergence of dogs began between 15,000 and 25,000 years ago, well before the invention of agriculture which dates back only about 12,000 years.
[...] free-ranging dogs ... in Ethiopia’s Bale Mountains National Park ... rarely ventured into the wolves’ territory, and the wolves and dogs had different dietary preferences. The wolves ate rodents almost exclusively. The dogs, however, had a more varied diet. In half of the 400 meals the researchers observed, the dogs dined on barley husks discarded by villagers. However, 21 percent of the dog’s meals consisted of human poop, making it the second most popular item on the menu...
I was also able to locate several other published reports on the consumption of human feces by dogs. [...] I also heard from investigators who had encountered instances of feces-eating canines in the course of their field studies. ... My reading of the relatively meager research on the consumption of poop by dogs suggests ... There is ample evidence that human feces can make up a substantial proportion of the daily diet of free-ranging dogs. And, from a dog’s point of view, human feces appears to be tasty and surprisingly nutritious. Given its nutritional value and accessibility, it is certainly reasonable to think that in some places, poop-eating was involved in the evolution of dogs. As is always the case in science, “more research is needed.” (MORE - details)
https://massivesci.com/articles/extrater...irus-nasa/
EXCERPT: . . . Viruses, while not technically “alive”, vastly outnumber all living organisms on our planet tenfold. There are an estimated 10^31 viruses on Earth - if every virus on Earth were lined up end to end, that line would extend 100 million light years. And as evidenced by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, they can dramatically influence life on Earth. But extraterrestrial viruses have not traditionally been a major search target in astrobiology. “We haven’t looked for [extraterrestrial] viruses specifically before because we’ve just barely started to scratch the surface of understanding them on Earth ... Previous to now, the technology and the know-how and the understanding of viruses hasn’t been at a point that we could really extrapolate that to other planetary bodies.”
Astrobiologists are only now beginning to incorporate knowledge of viruses into the growing body of knowledge about life’s origin, evolution, and distribution in the cosmos. Over the years, astrobiology has been a key component of investigating life’s history: by researching the conditions that may resemble early Earth or be found on other planets, scientists can investigate the environmental conditions that may have led to the development of life. [...] Adding viruses to the docket of targets in the search for extraterrestrial life would probably not even require a major shift in instrumentation or technology, says Bywaters. Technologies intended for use on spacecraft are currently being developed to analyze long-chain polymers such as DNA and RNA and would be capable of detecting living cells, viruses, and even non-conventional life forms different from what we would see on Earth.
To say that viruses have a bad reputation among humans would be an understatement. [...] Although some viral strains have massive impacts on human health, the vast majority of viruses only infect microbes. ... astrovirology can assist in “changing the mentality of the general populace that viruses don’t have to have this negative connotation,” as they are not always “these evil little things that destroy the world.” ... viruses are “critical for life on Earth as we know it - and maybe off Earth too.” Astrovirology can help scientists continue to learn about viruses on Earth: along with searching for extraterrestrial viruses, the field could provide insight into how viruses helped shape life’s origin and evolution, since viruses emerged early in the evolution of life on Earth. Additionally, it can lead towards better understanding the roles that viruses play here on Earth, “particularly early Earth and extraterrestrial analog ecosystems...” (MORE -details)
Did eating human poop play a role in the evolution of dogs?
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/...ution-dogs
EXCERPTS: . . . Ben Hart and his colleagues at the University of California at Davis School of Veterinary Medicine surveyed nearly 3,000 dog owners about their pet’s penchant for poop. Twenty-three percent of the owners had observed their dog eating feces, and 16 percent said their dogs did so frequently. Not surprisingly, many owners were grossed out by their pet’s dietary preferences. More than 900 of them had purchased at least one of the 11 commercial products that purport to reduce canine coprophagia. (None of them, unfortunately, worked.)
Hart and his colleagues hypothesize that canine feces-eating is essentially an obsolete trait that modern dogs inherited from their ancestors, grey wolves. They argued that the consumption of feces by wolves was an evolved adaptation that served to eliminate a major source of intestinal parasites near their dens. But [...others...] suggest that feces-eating may also have played an additional role in the evolution of dogs.
The anti-parasite hypothesis makes sense, but it does not explain why, when given the opportunity, dogs eat human feces. [...] One of the most widely accepted theories of dog evolution is the scavenger hypothesis ... Along with settlements came garbage dumps. ... wolves that were more temperamentally tolerant of being around humans would have more access to an abundant new food supply. ... This self-domestication strategy was successful. There are now a billion dogs on Earth compared to 300,000 wolves.
But what did these early wolf-dogs eat? [...] the scavenger/garbage dump hypothesis can’t be the whole story. The emergence of dogs began between 15,000 and 25,000 years ago, well before the invention of agriculture which dates back only about 12,000 years.
[...] free-ranging dogs ... in Ethiopia’s Bale Mountains National Park ... rarely ventured into the wolves’ territory, and the wolves and dogs had different dietary preferences. The wolves ate rodents almost exclusively. The dogs, however, had a more varied diet. In half of the 400 meals the researchers observed, the dogs dined on barley husks discarded by villagers. However, 21 percent of the dog’s meals consisted of human poop, making it the second most popular item on the menu...
I was also able to locate several other published reports on the consumption of human feces by dogs. [...] I also heard from investigators who had encountered instances of feces-eating canines in the course of their field studies. ... My reading of the relatively meager research on the consumption of poop by dogs suggests ... There is ample evidence that human feces can make up a substantial proportion of the daily diet of free-ranging dogs. And, from a dog’s point of view, human feces appears to be tasty and surprisingly nutritious. Given its nutritional value and accessibility, it is certainly reasonable to think that in some places, poop-eating was involved in the evolution of dogs. As is always the case in science, “more research is needed.” (MORE - details)
