Sunday, June 13, 2021

The mere sight of a sick canary may kick-start an observing canary’s immune system

Amazing stuff! Do exclusively visual cues from a sick animal or human possibly trigger immune system responses in observing animals and humans? Exciting! This phenomenon is not to be confused with e.g. typical social distancing between healthy and obviously sick animals/humans.

"... Healthy birds housed within view of fellow fowl infected with a common pathogen mounted an immune response, despite not being infected themselves, researchers report online June 9 in Biology Letters. ...
But some research has previously hinted that perceived threats can whip up immune cells. For example, one experiment in humans found that a mere photo of a sick person increases the activity of inflammation-stimulating chemicals called cytokines. ..."

"While avoidance of sick conspecifics [social distancing] is common among animals, little is known about how detecting diseased conspecifics influences an organism's physiological state, despite its implications for disease transmission dynamics. The avian pathogen Mycoplasma gallisepticum (MG) causes obvious visual signs of infection in domestic canaries (Serinus canaria domestica), including lethargy and conjunctivitis ... We tested whether disease-related social information can stimulate immune responses in canaries housed in visual contact with either healthy or MG-infected conspecifics. We found higher complement activity and higher heterophil counts in healthy birds viewing MG-infected individuals around 6–12 days post-inoculation, which corresponded with the greatest degree of disease pathology in infected stimulus birds. However, we did not detect the effects of disease-related social cues on the expression of two proinflammatory cytokines in the blood. ..."

The mere sight of illness may kick-start a canary’s immune system | Science News Simply seeing another bird get sick is enough to trigger an immune response in healthy birds

Here is the link to the underlying research article:

No comments: