Superbugs Super Suck

So by “tomorrow” I would have another post, I meant “the tomorrow after I trying to learn how to poach eggs and twerk in my kitchen”. Also no, I’m not joking; I’ve never poached an egg before.

ANYWAY. Superbugs.

You know I have one of these.

Like the lice that evolved as humans and human habits changed, so have superbugs have evolved. “Superbug” is a blanket term referring to any bacteria that has evolved antibiotic resistance. Strains that were once easily susceptible to mild antibiotics, now require stronger and stronger drugs to be eradicated. So not only are the chances or prolonged illness and death increased, but more people have to deal with harsher drugs to cure an infection. Not good.

How does this happen? By frequent exposure, or infrequent, low-level exposure to antibiotics. I can explain how this works with one of my convoluted analogies (cause I haven’t done one of those in a while).

Many of you have probably heard of the businesses that will blast classical music outside in order to discourage hoodlums. The idea being that angry punks have no appreciation for Bach and Brahms and, finding the music annoying, will leave. If only one business were pumping the Baroque jams, then the kids would leave and find somewhere else to hang. Should a lot of businesses try this (whether or not angry punks are actually a problem), the kids would quickly become accustomed to the music. Similarly, if only a few businesses tried it, but not at volumes loud enough to be a proper annoyance, the kids would easily develop a tolerance and never leave. As a result, the businesses that actually have a problem with angry punks and hoodlums will have to play less and less mainstream music (like opera or free-form jazz) louder in order to clear their sidewalks. But at a certain point, they’ll alienate their own customers on top of the kids that want to smoke and curse outside. Either way, the business now has a lot of Classical Resistant Angry Punks (CRAP) to deal with.

In this scenario, the kids are the bacteria and the music is the antibiotic. When people use antibiotics unnecessarily (like when folks demand some for a viral infection), not only does it kill off your natural microbiota, but the frequent exposure ensures that only bacteria tough enough to withstand the drugs will survive. Remember, even your natural bacteria can be dangerous in the right place or population size.

Another problem occurs when patients do not finish their course of antibiotics. Many people assume that just because they feel better, they can stop taking medicine. However, this can end up only killing off the weaker bacteria, leaving resistant strains to proliferate and evolve stronger resistance. Bacteria can also pass their resistance on to or receive resistance from others. That’s how we get multiple-resistant pains in the neck like Staph.

If you have a bacterial infection that will not clear up on its own (like many ear infections), ABSOLUTELY take the antibiotics your doctor prescribes. Just make sure you finish the dose and do NOT demand antibiotics if they’re not necessary. Many people (especially parents) want to feel like they’re doing something about an infection, but antibiotics are not always the answer.

Hugs not drugs, guys.

Although hugs will not cure TB.

I strongly recommend drugs if you have TB.

The RIGHT ONES though.

Minocin will not help.

Just talk to a doctor, OK?

Ophid out.

Source

–. 2014. “Stop The Spread of Superbugs.” NIH News In Health. March 6, 2015. < http://newsinhealth.nih.gov/issue/feb2014/feature1&gt;

Hyrax, Elephants and Florida

“What unlikely cousins are there in the animal kingdom? (looking at elephants and the hyrax.)”

Didn’t…you just answer that a little…? Hm…Well, I’ll tell you what: there are MILLIONS of “unlikely” relatives in the animal kingdom. Or at least, they LOOK very unlikely, but for a variety of reasons (most of them evolution….all of them evolution), it does make sense that they now seem so different. With regards to the hyrax and the elephant, they are one another’s CLOSEST living relatives. Which means they had other, closer relatives, but they’re all gone now (to Florida, maybe?). To get from the small, furry hyrax to the gigantic, wrinkled elephant, millions of years of divergent evolution occurred. There was an accumulation of different traits between populations of their common ancestor that led to different species. As these different traits were selected for and emphasized with evolution (ex. Animals evolved bigger and bigger or smaller and smaller as it proved advantageous), the descendant species came to look more and more different. Eventually, some species’ traits proved deleterious; they were selected AGAINST and at an increasingly severe disadvantage in terms of survival and reproduction. These species are the elephant/hyrax’s relatives that are currently extinct (or in Florida).

My point is that if you go back far enough, EVERYTHING has some hella unlikely cousins. These cousins seem particularly unlikely when you no longer can see the gradient between X and Y species. Is this a downer? Hell, probably. Am I making evolution less mysterious? God, I hope so. The elephant and hyrax may not look like they belong at the same family reunion, but the fact that they who are SO different remained while the rest of the family kited off to Florida, is damned impressive.

The State of No Return

So I know this is not the answer you’re looking for, but in researching this, I realized a few things: 1) there are several ways to answer that question 2) one of the ways I could answer that would be very hard for me to personally determine 3) I did not know what a hyrax was (apparently, not a type of goat). I could list off things that are closer to one another than to other things that make more sense (which I can still do, cause hey! It’s fun), but again, evolution ruins the party because those “close” relatives are millions of years of evolution, and many closer relatives apart.. I could personally determine which animals’ closest relatives are such and such surprising thing (as with the elephant and hyrax), but that research would take time that I do not have. Conversely, I could look at existing lists (which I will link to), but I’d prefer to be original here. Also, I think I was confusing hyrax with ibex. THESE ARE VERY DIFFERENT THINGS.

You can tell the difference thusly: this bro is cute and twee…

…while you can tell by the eyes that this guy WILL push you off a ledge. That one. That ledge. Avoid that ledge.

And now, a list:

• Shrimp and potato bugs (aka pill bugs, aka sow bugs, aka woodlice, aka the bug I tracked into the apartment yesterday &etc) are more closely related than potato bugs and millipedes or centipedes. That’s because they’re both crustaceans and the blanky-pedes are not (they’re myriapods).
• Cephalopods (squid, octopods, cuttlefish) and snails and slugs and oysters Rockefeller are all Molluscs.
• After decades of debate, scientists have decided that pandas are less like large, greyscale red pandas and more of an “aberrant bear”. A-BEAR-rant, right? Ha ha…ha…
• Hyenas, despite looking like hairy, ‘roided up pit bull/wolf hybrids, are more closely related to cats and have stinking ADORABLE pups.

• Sea pigs are related to sea cucumbers. Sea pigs exist. They exist and just…WHY. THEY ARE GOO WHAT WAS EVOLUTION THINKING.

WHY

Sources

Laidler, Keith. 2009. Animals: A Visual Guide to the Animal Kingdom. Quercus Publishing Plc, London.

Zweifel. 2002. “Hyraxes”. Encyclopedia of Animals. Barnes and Noble Books, New York.

Two separate CRACKED articles about unlikely animal relatives

5 Species You Won’t Believe Are Related

10 Animals You Won’t Believe Are Closely Related

Here’s WhyTF, Evolution.

WTF, Evolution?

Today’s science was brought to you by this hilarious tumblr, “WTF, Evolution?”. I imagine they will have material for years to come because there are some messed up animals out there. Except they’re not messed up, whatever freaky thang they got going on is adaptive; it makes them better suited to their environment.

Before we go any further, I need to lay down some ground rules. If a population (groups of individuals of a species) displays variation of traits, traits are heritable and the individuals reproduce more than the habitat can handle, then individuals with the most adaptive traits will reproduce the most. Furthermore, these adaptive traits accumulate over time, leading to speciation (founding of a new species). This is natural selection at work; adaptive traits are “selected for” in a given environment. Natural selection is the mechanism by which evolution occurs. That is, natural selection acts upon individuals and their populations evolve.

For an example, consider the deep pelagic nightmare, Sloane’s viperfish.

Sloane here cannot close its mouth because its teeth would skewer its face. Seem like a terrible idea? Well, once upon the time, there was a distant ancestor of Sloane. We’ll call her Annie. Annie had slightly longer teeth than the other fish of its species, she could catch and hold prey better than the other fish so it was able to reproduce more. Her offspring that inherited that trait also reproduced well. Descendants with even a little longer teeth than Annie had even more success in hunting and survived to reproduce even more. And so on and so forth until we come to Sloane.

Of course, some other individuals of Annie’s species were likely more adaptive in other ways; they were a little faster, bigger, etc. So they probably founded other species that either succeeded or have since gone extinct. Sloane’s family history demonstrates that evolution is not a straight line. One species does not just morph into another, new species branch from older species. One does not necessarily even need to displace the other if they occupy different niches (roles) in their environment (eg. New species eats a different food than its ancestor). Furthermore, natural selection can only work with what is there. Every evolved trait is kind of a jerry-rigged version of what came before. Which means that evolution does not lead to “perfection”. Otherwise, we oh-so advanced humans would not have useless wisdom teeth or appendixes burdening our mouths and guts (these are vestigial, or leftover, traits). If you are fixing a bicycle, it can only be as good as the original materials allow. Then everything changes if you change the environment it will live in. As with the humans, as with Sloane.

You could buy a new bike, but that would be cheating. Evolution does not cheat.

Sources

-. 2010. GRE Subject Test: Biology 5th Ed. Kaplan, New York.

Bohn, K.M. 2011. “Evolution and Adaptation”. Ecology. Whitman College. Walla Walla, WA.