Adventure Ausrama Blog

Red meat allergy. Can insects affect what you eat?  They certainly can!  Ticks are causing severe allergy to red meat in people who are bitten.  The relationship between ticks and allergy was only discovered in 2007.    Parasitic ticks causes allergy to red meat. The malady is called tick-induced mammalian meat allergy (TIMMA). Symptoms will not occur immediately on consuming red meat.  It can take up to 10 hours for complications to show.  It is triggered by proteins in tick saliva. Aversion to red meat is not the only symptom.  Sufferers can become allergic to dairy products.    Red meat allergy caused by parasitic tick anaphylactic shock. People are mainly affected in the United States and Australia.  It seems that settled housing makes a good home for ticks.  However, the parasitic ticks host is semi-wild animals.  Peanut allergy is well known.  Though, in parts of Sydney allergy to red meat is a...

Wasps enslave caterpillars. It could be seen as a genetics accident, though it appears to be a conscious decision by Someone out there. The wasps could not survive without caterpillars. If caterpillars all died out so would wasps. Parsitic wasps lay their eggs in all types of lepidoptera caterpillars. Both insects are so close in evolutionary terms that some wasp genes are actually in caterpillars. The reason for this is that 300 million years ago there was a common ancestor of Hymenopter, the insect order to which wasps belong, and Lepidoptera caterpillars. When eggs are laid inside the caterpillars, a large bracovirus is injected which supresses the immune response of Lipidoptera, so grubs are not killed off. They hatch and eat caterpillars alive! Sometimes caterpillars survive and develop into buterflies and moths with bracovirus DNA because it was picked up from wasps before injection into caterpillars. ◆ Genetics by Ty Buchanan   ◆ Adventure Australia Fun...

Tasmanian devils have a unique form of cancer. It is the only type that is contagious. Just how it is transmitted is the unknown factor. Scientists studying the disease now believe it should be reclassified as a parasite. Though at first glance it seems to be a cancer it has many characteristics of a parasite. The parasitic cancer stays in a host until the sufferer is irretrievably damaged then it will move on to a new host. It uses the Tasmanian devils predilection for violence to spread itself. It remains alive by sticking to the teeth. When devils fight they snap at each others' mouths causing blood to flow. It is really a new category of disease. Though a cancer it not in other animals. A parasite will exist in many animals. The disease originated in one female devil during the 1990s. Just how it originated is not known. It is such a difficult disease to treat. The Tasmanian devil could reach its demise in less than 15 years. http://www.adventure--australia.blog...