Have wasps been genetically engineered for tens of millions of years? Reflections on a parasitic wasp whose investigation by Darwin led him to realize that nature is not so much the place created by a good and benevolent God
One of the great myths of our day is that nature is 'perfect', 'noble' and 'harmonious'. Every plant and animal in nature exists in harmony with its fellows. They help each other and support each other, and if we judge by the Disney movies, they also all have a well-developed musical ear, extensive knowledge of folk dances and an almost pathological tendency to anvils.
It's hard not to recall, at this point, the caterpillar that appears in the movie 'Alice in Wonderland', sitting on a large mushroom and smoking an unidentified chemical that causes vague consciousness and a tendency to burst into spontaneous song. The film, surprisingly, is aimed specifically at children.
It cannot be doubted that the caterpillar in the film is happy. Beyond the attached hookah nozzle according to which he is a regular, he is not afraid of the other creatures of the forest. Later in his life he will turn into a pupa, grow lace wings and wonder and take off into the wild mating dance, as far as the wind takes him.
But this is not the fate that the 'noble' nature intended for one of the types of caterpillars studied by Charles Darwin. The brutal symbiosis between the caterpillar and the parasitic wasp was one of the main catalysts on the way to Darwin's understanding of evolution and natural selection. And it all started with a caterpillar.
In fact, it wasn't the caterpillars that bothered Darwin, but the wasps, and more specifically the parasitic wasps. Similar to other insect species, wasps lay eggs from which the young offspring hatch. In order for the offspring to develop inside the eggs, a supportive environment and optimal protection of the eggs is necessary. For this reason, some insects lay their eggs deep in the warm soil, where predators will not reach. Other mothers carry their eggs on their bodies, and guard them with all vigilance. The parasitic wasps, which cannot fly with their eggs on them, found a solution that combines the best of both worlds.
Darwin, who in his youth was deeply immersed in the studies of Christian theology and belief in a good and benevolent God, was shocked to discover that at least one family of wasps chooses to lay its eggs inside the bodies of other creatures - living larvae. The bodies of the larvae provide warmth and moisture to the eggs and the wasp offspring that develop inside. If you look at the matter without emotion, the phenomenon can be compared to forced pregnancy. But unlike pregnancy, the eggs hatch inside the body of the caterpillar, and the small worms that hatch from it eat the caterpillar from the inside out, when in many cases the caterpillar is still alive and conscious, while the small parasites gnaw its body.
Unlike a normal symbiosis, in which both partners benefit from their cooperation, it is clear that the wasp exploits the larva with unbridled selfishness, when it uses its body as an incubator for raising its offspring. Different species of wasps have developed and expanded their abilities in this area even beyond that: aside from laying eggs, some wasps also inject the larvae with poisons that paralyze their movement abilities (but not the ability to feel pain). Other wasps have taken the technique even further, causing the larvae to enter a zombie-like state for the rest of their lives. Even after the wasp's offspring hatch from its skin, the caterpillar continues to accompany and protect them, without eating or drinking, until its last day.
The cruel symbiosis between the parasitic wasps and the larvae was one of the reasons for Darwin's abandonment of the idea of a good and benevolent God. Is it possible that such a God exists, who does not spare the lives of his creatures? And as he wrote to one of his colleagues, "I cannot convince myself that a benevolent and all-powerful God would have created the Eichnaemonida [the name of the family of parasitic insects to which he referred], with the express intention that they would feed on the living bodies of the larvae."
From the belief in a merciful and benevolent God, Darwin went on to formulate the theory of evolution that is carried out through natural selection, and its principles are still valid today and are taught in universities all over the world. But what Darwin could not have known is that the larva is only the last part of a complex system of symbiosis that began within the body of the wasp itself, and is in itself an example of the way organisms evolve.
The poison that the wasps inject into the larvae has always intrigued entomologists and molecular biologists. Normal animal poison is based on simple chemical molecules, capable of harming body cells. They may bind to receptors on the surface of the cells and send them distorted messages that will lead to their death, penetrate into the cells and paralyze metabolic mechanisms or affect whole tissues and lead, for example, to kidney failure. But if the organism manages to resist the bad impact of the toxins, then they are drained from the body in a short time. How, with a single injection of the eggs and the poison, do the wasps manage to stop the activity of the larva's body during the long period that passes until the eggs hatch?
And beyond that - even the larvae are not deprived of protection. As soon as the eggs penetrate the larva's body, unique blood cells are called into action that form a suffocating shell around the eggs. How, then, do the eggs manage to survive inside the larva, despite the active defenses in its body?
In the sixties, the end of the thread to solve the double mystery was discovered for the first time. When the wasp eggs were photographed at high magnification, using a powerful electron microscope, a foreign factor was revealed that had 'caught a ride' on the eggs. Tens and hundreds of tiny particles settled on each of the small balls, which strongly resembled the simplest form of life in the world: viruses.
With the disclosure of the discovery, opinions arose that it is a simple system of symbiosis, during which the virus infects the parasitic wasp, reaches the eggs and passes through them to the larva. This theory was initially accepted by the majority, but it soon became clear that the virus transmitted to the larvae itself contains genes that originate in wasp cells and code for the production of proteins that harm the body of the larva. When the virus infects the larval cells, the genes are expressed inside the cells and enslave the cell systems for their needs. The infected cells produce the toxins inside the larva's body, thus leading to the collapse of the immune system, paralysis and prevention of pupation.
If the discoveries ended here, we would be sued. It has been known for many years that just as viruses can insert DNA segments into cells, so they may, in extremely rare cases, receive DNA segments from the cells themselves. The virus, it turns out, simply evolved side-by-side with the parasitic wasp. When the wasp laid its eggs more efficiently into the larva, more offspring would survive, and the upgraded virus would spread to more wasps in the next generation of the population. In the end, we would get a whole population of wasps, all of which contain the virus with the wasp toxins.
Seemingly, a simple case of evolution, but a deeper examination of the genes carried by the virus revealed that it is a deeper symbiosis than expected, because those viruses do not carry genes that code for the creation of new virus particles.
To understand why the discovery caused such a profound shock, one must understand that normal viruses always contain genes that code for the production of new virus particles inside the host cells. Without these genes, the infected cells cannot produce new viruses to pass on to new cells. A virus that does not contain such genes will die out very quickly, because it will have no way to multiply inside the infected cells.
How can you explain the existence of a virus, which does not contain the basic genes necessary for its reproduction? Obviously, for such a virus to continue to exist, cells are needed to produce it. Indeed, the genetic code of the ovary cells in the adult wasp contains the genes necessary for the production of the virus. The resulting viruses go outside the ovary cells, stick to the eggs and with them are injected into the larva. It is literally genetic engineering of one organism by another organism, mediated by viral mechanisms.
It is clear, then, how the virus is created inside the cells, and what are the reasons that such a mechanism is preserved in nature. But as is the way of good scientific questions, the answer to the existence of the virus only leads to the opening of more questions, first and foremost: how did such a mechanism come to fruition in the wasp?
The first explanation put forward was that the parasitic wasp was an evolutionary breakthrough, and that it was the first multicellular organism whose cells acquired the ability to produce their own viruses, through a series of mutations that accumulated over millions of years, side by side with natural selection and other elements criticizing evolution. The 'virus' according to this opinion, is not a real virus but a new invention of the wasps.
An alternative explanation - less exciting, but more likely - was that in an unusual event in the past, a foreign virus attacked the cell of a parasitic wasp. Instead of the virus enslaving the cells for its needs, the wasp managed to take control of the virus's division mechanisms and use them for its needs. From then on, the two species underwent a common evolution, with the virus saving the wasp the need to produce the poisons itself, and the wasp spreading the viral genes along with its genetic code to all its offspring.
In February 2009, the last piece of the puzzle fell into place, in a study that examined in depth the genetic code of the parasitic wasps from the Braconidae family: Chelonus inanitus and Cotesia congregate. The researchers identified 22 genes of viral origin that are expressed in the wasp's ovaries, and showed that they correspond to the genes present in the nodivirus family - a relatively anonymous family of viruses that infect insects.
When you put all the pieces of the puzzle together, you get a picture showing that the parasitic wasps evolved into their current form 74 million years ago, when they managed to take over one of the nodivirus species that attacked them, and co-evolve with it. After comparing DNA segments taken from different viruses, the researchers formed an informed assumption that shortly after the viral genome invaded the wasp's genome, the wasp's genes managed to replace those inside the resulting viruses. Most of the genes associated with parasitism were acquired and evolved later in the parasitic wasps.
A moment towards the end, we will return to Darwin, who could not believe in God caring for his larval creatures, while creating small torture machines in the image of the parasitic wasps. The same lack of faith accompanied Darwin throughout his life, and guided him on his way to find another explanation for the abundance and biological diversity that exists today.
The explanation he found, after gathering thousands of testimonies from hundreds of studies, did not require the presence of a good and benevolent God, or the existence of a 'noble' and 'harmonious' nature. The mechanism that Darwin revealed is natural selection, in which animals of different species and within the same species fight with each other, in a desperate attempt to gain control over the resources around them and produce offspring that will pass on their genetic code. Dear inhabitants of nature - here they do not behave accordingly. There are no moral laws and there is no good or bad - the war of existence is the only law, and the winner is the one who gets to pass on his DNA to future generations.
This is the difficult picture that Darwin revealed to the world. But there are bright spots: symbiosis serves as an almost universal way in which different organisms can help each other. Altruism exists in many species on the planet, including bacteria, and has been proven to be one of the most effective strategies for the survival of the species. The case of the larva, the virus and the parasitic wasp shows us the two ways in which evolution can occur: on the one hand, the virus and the wasp have reached a complete symbiosis, which benefits both species. On the other hand, both together kill the larva.
fair? noble? "Life is pain... anyone who says otherwise is trying to sell you something." Says the main hero in the movie 'The Enchanted Princess', and in light of the incessant competition, followed by blood, suffering and torment in nature, it is hard to disagree with his statement. Every minute larvae are killed in agony, and the parasitic wasps continue to multiply in their flesh. But when the day comes, the larvae will develop a better defense against the wasps - maybe even their own virus - and then the formations will turn. again, and again and again.
Ab initio - Ab initio,
Ad infinitum - Ad infinitum,
The Evolution is Marching On.
57 תגובות
http://www.arava.co.il/moatza/matnas/aravatv/magazines/wasp/
I took a video of a digger wasp. 5 minutes of fascinating film
An example in the video of an exploitative symbiosis between a wasp and a caterpillar
http://sharetw.info/lofiversion/index.php/%20%3C/div%3E%3C/t57729.html
Joker:
The facts show otherwise.
Such people do indeed cause damage to society but do not gain an evolutionary advantage.
This is a fact because the phenomenon is not common - not even among monkeys.
It turns out that the social animals have developed a tendency to punish those pathological cases (there is even a phenomenon called "altruistic punishment" in which the punisher puts himself at risk to punish the one who acted improperly. We see this a lot on the road these days) and the result is that it does not pay off evolutionarily to be a psychopath.
Michael
Regarding response 35
According to your own definition of morality, why is a person who does not know the difference between good and bad a "pathological" case? If what we call "morality" is the product of evolution, then from the point of view of evolution itself there is no priority for "good" over "bad" (see the topic of the article). Furthermore, it can be proven in many cases that "bad" gives an evolutionary advantage over me
"Good". So why pathological? Perhaps on the contrary, and according to this approach, in terms of evolution, moral people are actually a pathological case?
They say he left with a question and did not return with a question.
Is there anyone here who does linguistic editing? There are many mistakes in your articles.
At least it seems that the same caterpillar is playing in the pictures 🙂
His defensive moves also seem to be taken from the same martial art 🙂
Maybe it's the same wasp and maybe not but either way it shows how wonderful and cruel nature is.
I'm not sure it's the same wasp. There are several thousand different species of parasitic wasps.
It is probably the same wasp, but - as you can see - only part of the phenomenon is described.
The article in NG was much more detailed and included the entire life cycle - from the injection of the eggs, through the hatching of the larvae, their embodiment, their re-incarnation by the host larva to the protection of them until death.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14053-zombie-caterpillars-controlled-by-voodoo-wasps.html?feedId=online-news_rss20
The film attached to the baby is highly recommended. I saw it back when I was writing the article, but since I had no information about whether it was a viral toxin, I decided not to burden the article even more.
I'm sorry, Oren, but I don't have any more details.
It was when I was hanging out on the exercise bike at the gym and zipped into the program in the middle.
It was yesterday afternoon.
The anonymous user previously was me 🙂 every now and then I forget to add the name when the computer is different 🙂
Michael,
Thank you for getting us back to the beneficiary and focusing us on the thing for which we visit the site. Really interesting, can you say the name / number of the episode exactly?
Leave the fatigue. Purim has passed, the vacation is over and she is tired of the very idea that now she has to go back and dress up all year as a thinking person. She just wants to tire us out too.
A much more interesting thing is what I saw yesterday on the National channel as part of the series "In the Womb".
There we are talking about a parasitic wasp of some kind that increases to do more than what is described here.
After the worms gnaw their way out of the larva, an interesting thing happens:
The wasp larvae need one more step before they become an adult wasp.
They wrap themselves in a cocoon - like butterflies.
The enslaved larva was also supposed to wrap itself in a cocoon for the purpose of continuing its development, but instead it weaves a cocoon precisely around the wasp larvae - a kind of additional layer of protection. Then he stays in place and protects them from any factor that approaches and may endanger them. He does this non-stop - not even going to eat - until he dies of hunger.
tired,
Reporter:
"The truth? We are all ants in a laboratory, and from there, through a microscope that is bigger than us and, in addition, a highly advanced recording device, we hear the theological debates pouring out from all sides..."
I'm sure you can reason and explain how you came to this interesting diagnosis...
Please share your discoveries with us, so that we, the savages, can get even a little bit closer to the height of your thoughts.
tired,
He compared us to savages living in the jungle and bowing down to the airplane as if it were a god because they don't understand how it works.
But look it's a wonder, we understand how nerves work, how the nerve message passes, what happens in the synapses and even where the thinking, feeling and vision centers are located in the brain.
What do we not understand?
We do not understand who or what God is.
And now she asked.
When you worship some god, which you certainly and surely do not understand, are you not much more like us, who believe only in what they understand, than that plane-worshipping savage?
tired,
Any chance of a family connection between you and someone named "Hugin"?
Say no more…
the truth? We are all ants in a laboratory, and from there, through a microscope that is bigger than us and, in addition, a very advanced recording device, we hear the theological debates pouring out from all sides... about the emotions of animals and other surprises, and the smile turns into rolling laughter when we talk about evolution... when, in fact, it is not even possible to explain a sperm and an egg joining By "chance" and build incredible intelligence by "chance" and it's all actually a development of coincidences.
I want to tell you that I don't have the verbal talent that all the polite writers here have who love themselves and what they write to the core... and yet I allow myself to say that pride takes a person out of the world, and in the end everything is swallowed up in the darkness of death that awaits us all... So blah blah blah nice to all of you, because I at least after blah blah blah for most of my life... I decided to get real answers, and not chew until I vomit- but of course talking about a spiritual world is "low and incorrect" for the subject... so anyway, understand... if you were Growing up in the jungle for example, without any civilization... then you would be sure that there is no other world, that everything is a forest and random vegetation and everything is accidental, and then suddenly you would see a plane, then you would bow to it, and think that it is a being not from this world... then you will know that you have not yet left the world 'Vengel, and you are shuffling around in the back of the dangers to find explanations for phenomena that may seem miraculous to you but really... it's really not surprising
Just think about it, you have a heart - and you not only do not see it, but also do not control its functioning
You have a brain - but it is powered by billions of cells and one cell is messed up and... the results are severe, and you have no control there either
You have no control over your bladder, nor your bowels...
You will never understand the inside, and probably the outside as well.
But you can't argue with facts, the one who created the famous "Darwin" is the same one who gave you material to waste your life with in investigations about nothing, instead of really living it...
Aya:
You can already see from the title that this is a story about humans (Darwin) - this is not the title of a proper scientific article, so your expectations were not formed based on the data that was in front of you, but based on something else that I don't know what it is.
Besides, you wrote that it was particularly poorly written. This is something that can also be written about fantasy stories and it does not refer specifically to the scientific nature of the article. So don't be surprised that people didn't understand what you were confused about.
Aya,
The article is not a scientific article, and does not pretend to be one. As such, it has also not been peer-reviewed, and does not contain information that has not been previously discovered and disclosed. If you are interested in reading proper scientific articles, I recommend turning to journals such as Science and Nature. It is worth noting, however, that even there you will come across the historical reviews formulated as a story.
As for the present article, the purpose of the article is to reveal a small piece of Darwin's story, and to focus on the abundance of new and interesting information about the genetics of the parasitic wasps. The main point of the article is the story of the wasp, and it is not clear to me where the 'horrific lack of objectivity' comes into this topic.
As for the bibliography, you are invited to refer, among other things, to the links I provided in one of the first responses, and in the article
Polydnaviruses of Braconid Wasps
Derived from an Ancestral Nudivirus
Recently published in the journal Science, by Bezier, Drezen et al
have a nice weekend,
Roy.
And again I add that I do not express an opinion in any way about the content, the interest, or the author's writing talent.
This is not a scientific paper although it pretends to be one. If the words expression of opinion had been written before the article I would not have had any problems with it. Everything I claimed was not interesting or worth reading and if you go back and read my first comment you will see that it is not written like a scientific article. Not a scientific review article either. I just thought that what was posted here was in a different category. I must have been wrong. Even if we ignore the structure that simply reminds of an article expressing an opinion, it is impossible to ignore the appalling lack of objectivity throughout the entire article. And another thing - even in Wikipedia and in every scientific article they bother to insert a bibliography - so that if you do not agree with certain facts you can check their source.
I will extend if you can call the child by his name: expressing an opinion.
My argument is that there is no external authority, but there is an internal authority.
In my opinion, evolution has adjusted the vast majority of humans in a similar way, and therefore they are able to create moral conventions and a legal system that will meet the needs.
Of course, there are pathological cases of people who do not distinguish between good and bad just as there are those who do not distinguish between colors, but just as the color blindness of some of us does not make you decide that there are no colors, the moral blindness of others should not lead you to the conclusion that there is no valuable morality.
Regarding "red" - it is not true that there is no red in it. It actually has red because "red" like "good" is the name of a feeling - just like "painful", "stinky" and "beautiful"
Regarding "illusion". This is about definitions and terminology and that is another topic for discussion.
Regarding the continuation of your words.
It is clear to any reasonable person that there is no authority and cannot be an authority to decide on the existence of things that do not exist.
And regarding the definitions, the new situation (where we understand that good and evil do not exist in reality, but only in emotion) leads to a direct conclusion that the whole matter becomes arbitrary. And just as it is not possible for there to be an authority for the matter of morality, so you or I are also not an authority for everything that follows from it. And so the whole thing is meaningless.
These are the obligatory conclusions from the new situation. and therefore the gloom.
You say that there are deeds that "deserve to be called good", and I say that there is no such thing as a "good deed".
This is not a dispute. I will also agree that an act can be called good according to the feeling it evokes in us just as I say it is red in color even though I know there is no red in it.
point:
No.
This is not the dispute.
I claim that there is and is something that deserves to be called a corrupt act or a good act even when the definitions of "good" and "bad" are the products of evolution.
The sadness that arises in us when we watch an act of injustice - is also real - and I claim that this sadness is not about the lack of a definition of good and bad, but because we see someone who acts in a way that is not in line with this definition.
So much for the controversy. I would like to emphasize other things I said on the matter and add a few others.
I also pointed out that, in fact, not only am I not saddened by the fact that our terms of good and bad are not dictated by some "authority bar" on the subject of good and evil, but I am even happy about it because in all the cases where such a "bar authority" was observed in action, his concepts of good and bad were found In contradiction to my natural concepts and I cannot imagine a life in which I adopt such concepts dictated to me from the outside.
In other words - what you call "the absence of good and evil" is, in my opinion, precisely "the existence of the only good and evil that can be tolerated".
I will also add and say that in fact - apart from what we call "truth" - there is no adjective we can give to an object, claim or action - that is not based on our inner feelings which are all the products of evolution.
"Good" and "bad" are not exceptions in this regard, therefore the prefix "illusion" should not be attached to them, as is not done with "green", "spicy", "painful", "unfortunate" and the like.
The only adjective in our discourse that receives meaning from the outside world independently of the structure of our mind and the process of its development is the adjective "truth" and its derivatives ("true" etc.).
I mentioned the word sadness after you, you talked about the feeling of sadness that arises in us when we see that an injustice has been done.
In conclusion, is it true that this is the point of contention:
I said that it sounds gloomy that there is no such thing as a corrupt deed or a good deed.
You claim it's not gloomy, and it's just my personal feeling stemming from prejudice.
I claim that the feeling of gloom comes from the same feeling (which you agreed exists in every normal person) fundamentally that arouses in us a feeling of good or bad.
Aya:
Coincidentally, a discussion about the terms "good" and "bad" developed around this article, and all the debaters understood that these terms are not absolute.
So now you're trying to play the cards for us and say that this article is (absolutely) bad, contrary to the feelings of most readers (which I assume you can see in the comments that enjoyed the article, even a lot)?
I allow myself to represent all the readers who responded and tell you that you are wrong (actually there is no need for me to say this because all the responses that are not yours say so)
Aya,
Thanks for the review. I hope you will find articles and other articles on the site that will be more to your taste.
interesting and fascinating
Thank you
Very poorly written. Mixing some facts with feelings and interpretations of the writer. This is not scientific writing.
A small addition to Roy's answer to Yoel Moshe:
Various animals (including insects) try to avoid what we know to be a cause of pain.
We are smart enough to understand that pain is necessary and therefore we also know that it is necessary to treat those pathological cases of children who do not feel pain (and may - as a result - even eat their own fingers).
Instead of attributing to insects an analytical thinking ability through which they conclude that the very things they are trying to avoid may cause them harm, it makes more sense to attribute to them a much more automatic mechanism which is the pain mechanism.
Friends:
The truth is, I'm quite overwhelmed by the argument.
Those of you who follow my statements on the website know that I am not a materialist.
I am also the one who has often brought here examples that animals are endowed with the same feelings.
After all, it is clear to everyone that we agree on the facts and the only question is how to live in peace with you.
The sadness I was talking about, period, is not the result of the fact that morality is unjust but that caused by the deprivation of others at the hands of others. I explained that this was one of the feelings that, along with others, would have crystallized for you into a new concept that you would (perhaps) call morality.
In your first response you spoke of a completely different sadness when you expressed frustration that good and bad are not defined objectively while I claim that if you had not internalized the religious message that morality should come from an external source you would not have felt this way.
To further help you stop regretting that the origin of morality is not external, I would like to remind you that all types of external "morality" dictated by religions are in the eyes of the thinking person patently immoral.
Imagine the frustration you would feel in a situation where your inner sense of morality was in conflict with an external and objective moral writing! This would require you to shed any natural sense of morality (as the religious do) and adopt rules of conduct that every fiber of your soul screams is immoral!
Therefore, period, I, not only am not sad that morality has no external source, I am happy about it.
We will try to be precise,
According to one of the sources I read, some of the parasitic wasps (there are more than 20,000 different species, so it is difficult to refer to just one) paralyze the host insect's ability to move, but do not affect the central nervous system. The host remains paralyzed, but its brain continues to work. A similar, but rare, phenomenon can also occur in humans who are anesthetized before surgery: only the voluntary muscles can be accidentally anesthetized, but not the consciousness.
Although I don't know if caterpillars feel pain, since it's hard to ask them. But since this is one of the most effective and common defense and warning mechanisms in nature, one can automatically assume that they do feel pain.
As for Darwin, his assumptions are with him. The problem of suffering in the world has always been an obstacle for the Christian religion and its ilk, who believe in an all-powerful and benevolent God. As the rationalist showed, the problem can be solved in many ways: it is possible that God is putting us to the test, it is possible that he is punishing us for bad behavior in the past, etc. In all these cases the problem is not solved, because if God is indeed benevolent and all-powerful, then he consciously chooses to punish us and hurt us. But... he is still good and benevolent. He just doesn't want to be nice to us.
What good, then. We will remember this when the next attack on a kindergarten occurs.
As for the evolution of the process, we actually have interesting evidence from the past of the parasitic wasps. We witness the shape of the sting changing according to the type of parasites, and to this day there are 'living fossils' - species of wasps that have not undergone the same evolution, and lay their eggs on the hosts (instead of inside them).
In short, evidence for the evolution of parasitism in wasps is abundant. As for the evidence for the evolution of the use of viruses, these rely on molecular biology, which was exactly reviewed in the last article cited in the news.
The information is intriguing and as usual the multi-step complexity behind the picture is amazing. In short, thanks to Roy and the editor. However, it is difficult to break free from the afterthought throughout the article, which is read more as indoctrination than a necessary opinion on the merits of the matter. What a wonderful complexity and a harmonious result, even though it is painful [to the caterpillar] in front of us. And in fact, what is the writer's assumption based on, that 'the wasp paralyzes the caterpillar's ability to react, but not The ability to feel pain? Since when do we humanize the world of insects and attribute to it an awareness of pain and more in the sense of sorrow? Even though I am short of expressing an opinion in the polemic of the sharpened definitions of morality, as it developed in the responses to the article, I think that no known human moral school has taken upon itself the suffering of insects and its prevention as a task. A casual summer mosquito slayer would also agree to the irrelevance of such morality. I have not read Darwin in the original and I am familiar with the Christian theology he grew up with, however I find it hard to believe that she did not take into account the invention of predator/prey relationships at the base of the natural animal world. And another small note the almost poetic tone The accompanying article, especially towards the end, about altruism as an element in evolution does not solve us from finding a systematic explanation of how such a complex system is established in stages of natural selection. In conclusion, despite the 'mat' atmosphere on every religious moral thesis that the writer tried to equate to an article, the body of facts indeed has a wonderful complexity in the macro world, but there is no moral innovation in it on the one hand and it sharpens many questions in the description of the gradualness and stages of development on the other hand.
I really liked point 5's response
And I want to add, in fact and it is possible to make a reduction to everything and I mean literally everything, everything in fact is an illusion, even we humans with consciousness and self-awareness are nothing more than molecules and these molecules are only atoms, and these atoms are only particles and the particles are only a string that vibrates at a specific frequency . So the objective truth is that everything that really exists is strings, stars are strings, people are strings and consciousness is strings. What we define as a person or a bag or a thought that goes through our head is just a name we give to a specific arrangement of strings.
rationalist,
Are you saying that the caterpillar also has to wait for redemption and the judgment days? For the day when the wasp and the virus will live in harmony with him?
That exact "feeling of sadness" I'm talking about. After all, it is the basis for the definition of what is good and what is bad. What did you think I was talking about?
And it's not at all something special for humans, even dogs act sad when their owner is hurt.
I agree with Michael and beyond that, even if you hold the attitude that everything is evolutionary and nature determined everything through natural selection, then morality does not become something that does not concern nature for the simple reason that we ourselves are a creation of nature and evolution and we have morality and we cannot exist socially without morality it is almost like an instinct . Therefore, those who advocate this approach can say that morality is the very advanced evolution of nature through us.
Rationalist:
You dishonor the name you have chosen for yourself.
Only a stupid man like Darwin could repeat the question because of such a thing,
He could have asked the same question about animals that eat each other. Why is it like that?
Where is justice?
And the answer is simple that really eating meat is an improper thing according to Judaism, therefore it was allowed only after the flood where man fell from his rank and the same with animals
And only in the future will we return to the optimal situation of "a wolf lives with a lamb and a tiger lives with a goat"
point:
I apologize for rambling but I still have to make my point even clearer.
In my opinion when you say "that the feeling attributes good and bad to something beyond the feeling to something external" you are indeed talking about an illusion but I claim that this illusion is not innate. I claim that if you were not brought up on the basis of the religious definition of morality you would not have thought about an external factor at all.
All you have left in this case is a feeling of sadness when you see someone being hurt for no injustice, a feeling of anger if that someone was you and a feeling of embarrassment if you were the one who wronged another.
In my opinion, after a certain period of thought you would recognize the common denominator between these situations and invent for yourself the concept of "morality" (you might call it something else but it doesn't matter).
In that case you wouldn't suffer from all the frustration that comes from defining morality.
Of course, this would not save you from other frustrations that belong to the realm of morality, since morality (I don't know if the literal connection I'm pointing to at the moment actually exists in the original, but it is certainly interesting) is nothing but "torment" because it is often found on the borderline between two opposing systems of impulses One of them is the one that pushes you to care first and foremost for Number One and the other is the one that puts limits on your willingness to give expression to the first set of impulses and says (in a big way) "Don't do what you hate to your friend".
This conflict is by its very definition excruciating and is probably the one that should have given the moral its name.
Friends,
I'm glad you enjoyed the article. I wrote it under unusual circumstances, traveling by train between the laboratory and the reserve, and it's good to see that it came out okay.
Point, at your request, a number of references:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16597-ancient-virus-gave-wasps-power-over-caterpillar-dna.html
http://www.life.uiuc.edu/whitfield/pubs/pdfs/ScienceNow.pdf
And yes, I agree that this is an extraordinary discovery. It's not every day that you come across a multicellular creature that produces viruses on its own. Actually, I'm pretty sure it's the former.
Roy.
What kind of morality are we talking about here? All in all, what the wasp does is predation, albeit a very sophisticated one. How is this conceptually different from a lion eating a doe or a man eating a steak?
Does the wasp have a choice?
Evil by definition is unnecessary harm and that is not the case here.
Indeed, extremely fascinating.
Michael and Point are right. As Darwin showed, there is no good and benevolent God, and behavior in nature is dictated by survival mechanisms, in which both cooperation and war (according to the principles of game theory) play important roles. There is truth in the point that there is no meaning in nature for the concepts of 'good' and 'bad', although it is possible to observe behaviors that we call 'moral', but it is possible to see (by closely examining each one) that they bring benefit to those who engage in them. Human morality, on the other hand (as suggested by Michael), is a cultural matter (which has evolutionary roots) and in which it is certainly possible to assign good and bad scores, which are generally agreed upon by all (except, perhaps, al-Qaeda and the like).
Michael
By and large, there is no disagreement between us only regarding certain meanings of terminology.
Morality, since it derives from our internal definition, and since the feeling attributes good and bad to something beyond the feeling to something external, is therefore an illusion. Just like the colors we see are an illusion.
And illusion, like any illusion leads to frustration. And there is nothing to do against it because it is an illusion inherent in us.
point:
I have to go back and make it difficult.
This is not the illusion of good and bad, but their definition.
There's a difference.
Is a chair really a chair? Maybe he's even a Chair? We give certain things names and use these names in our thoughts and conversations.
Good and bad are names of our feelings.
Many people (and from your response it turns out that you are among them) are used to thinking that the very definition of these words should be based on an objective source. What does this cause? Among other things, because you say that morality is not moral.
This is of course a contradiction. On what basis do you determine that we are not moral? This is not based on an external source but based on your internal definition of the concept of morality. This means that you hold a self-contradictory definition of morality.
All you have to do to free yourself from the conflict is to change the definition (but really change - not just from the language and the outside).
Morality is a feeling. It is a turn of evolution and as such it really exists and is not an illusion.
After all, you can call love an illusion as well as hunger. This is not a productive approach - it only hinders the expression and does not change the essence of things.
I repeat and emphasize - your frustration is only due to a lie that was instilled in you during your life - a lie based on an inconsistent definition of the word morality. If you free yourself from the lie, you will also be freed from the frustration.
Indeed an interesting article, it should be corrected since symbiosis is life in partnership when each party benefits from the partnership, in the case of the wasp and the caterpillar it is parasitism and indeed there is a name from the wasp
Called parasitic wasps, if the virus was a foreign creature and not a creation of the wasp
It could be said that the virus and the wasp live in symbiosis.
Fascinating article,
More the better.
Thank you!
Apparently there are animals that don't just take care of larvae.
See for yourself. shocking.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23eimVLAQ2c
Michael,
I hear your comment (4) and Ennio Morricone's song is playing in my head 🙂
When I read the title of the article I did not expect the content (don't know if it's good or bad). I was already expecting more exhausting rants in vain.
Really interesting article, I liked it. More articles like this would be welcome. Thanks again Roy!
The illusion of good and evil exists like the other illusions. I just mentioned that their existence is not real (objective).
These feelings (meaning the very ability to feel it) of good and bad exist like the rest of the things in our perceptions as a result of evolution, and therefore they serve the immoral mechanism of blind survival wars.
Contrary to what the illusion says.
In conclusion,
Moral thinking leads to the conclusion that it is itself immoral, and that's all it has to say.
point:
It's not gloomy.
The good, the bad and the ugly - they are all products of evolution, but this does not mean that they do not exist.
The conditioning created in us by education on the knees of religious tradition causes us to underestimate the value of what we do not come from some external authority, but those who break free from this conditioning see that they continue to love the good and hate the bad just as much.
At the end you wrote: "But there are bright spots..."
The point is that there are no points of light and darkness, all morality loses its objective meaning (the same source of light) in the light of evolution.
Therefore there are no points of light (or darkness). There are only biological processes, as grim as it sounds.
Amazing. First time I've heard of a creature that produces a virus that doesn't reproduce and I find it hard to believe.
Can I have links to this matter?
Wasps always gave me the creeps.
exciting.
Following on from one of the sentences in the article, I would like to say that just today I read in another article a quote from Darwin's writings according to which he drew the idea of the mechanism of evolution from Malthus's writings on the subject of the war of economic survival.
Just a nice reminder about the evolution of memes.