
Animals Use Social Distancing to Avoid Disease - anthilemoon
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/animals-use-social-distancing-to-avoid-disease1/
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macspoofing
Not surprising. Fitness (or lack thereof) in general is discriminated against
by social animals because unfit animals attract predators and are a burden for
the herd or the pack. Certainly diseased animals would fall into the 'unfit'
category. Humans are no different and have been segregating or quarantining
sick individuals for all of history. The similarity doesn't quite fit with
COVID polices however. The slight discrepancy is that we are practicing social
distancing with healthy or asymptomatic individuals.

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yareally
Birds, with many being social creatures traveling in flocks will try their
best to pretend not to be sick for this reason. They know the flock will leave
them behind if they show signs of illness.

Annoyingly, this translates into one's pet parrot doing its best to pretend
it's not sick and makes it hard to tell when you should take it to the vet.

~~~
macspoofing
On the other side, certain animal species (some birds, and mammals) will feign
an injury to lead a predator away from their young.

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throwaway0a5e
The kill rate for the disease the example animal (lobster) the article spends
most of its time discussing is ~50%. It isn't surprising that avoiding it is a
highly consistent and avoidable behavior since the competitive advantage is so
large.

Humans kick people out far before the stakes are that high. I'm reminded of
how people with Leprosy were treated before there were drugs to treat it.

Generally speaking "hanging around with the least fit members of your species"
is a losing strategy if you want to not starve long enough to reproduce so it
should come as no surprise that evolution selects for the trait of avoiding
the least fit members of one's species to varying degrees (depending on the
specifics of the species and the type of "least fitness" in question).

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colmvp
Vietnam has very few cases of Covid-19, especially given its population and
proximity to China.

One of the reasons why was because they had some of the strongest containment
measures in the entire world. One of the strategies they did early on was to
have a very strict quarantines of villages/regions known to have infections.
They would quarantine second and third degree connections to people who were
infected. It may seem extreme, but given the fact that the number of total
infections is fewer than 500, it's hard to argue that it wasn't effective.

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mmm_grayons
I'm sure strong containment would help, but that degree strikes me as an
infringement upon liberties. It _is_ extreme, and the fact that it was
effective doesn't change the legality/morality of that sort of infringement on
personal sovereignty.

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minikites
>an infringement upon liberties

Which is more of an infringement on liberty, a temporary quarantine or
permanent death?

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bjlorenzen
“Give me liberty or give me death” were founding words of our country. If you
don’t believe our commitment to liberty and freedom was important, then what
else made America the #1 most successful country for the last century?

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krapp
>If you don’t believe our commitment to liberty and freedom was important,
then what else made America the #1 most successful country for the last
century?

The US got through World War 2 _relatively_ unscathed compared to the rest of
the world with its manufacturing infrastructure and vast natural resources
intact, profited from loans made to aid Europe's recovery, entrenched its
military hegemony leveraged by being the sole nuclear power, and made the US
dollar the world's reserve currency.

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garraeth
Total tangent, apologies in advance:

A genius university Dean recently re-labeled "Social Distancing" to "Physical
Distancing". Lets not be "socially distanced", but rather simply "physically
distanced".

Just putting this out there in hopes that it catches on.

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cik
We've been saying this in Canada since at least mid-March.

[https://globalnews.ca/news/6717166/what-is-physical-
distanci...](https://globalnews.ca/news/6717166/what-is-physical-distancing/)

~~~
flyGuyOnTheSly
No we haven't.

There were a few news articles about changing the name, heard it on the radio
for a few weeks, etc... but literally everybody in my bubble refers to it as
social distancing.

Social Distancing has the first mover advantage on Physical Distancing.

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prescojan
A lot of articles that start with a personifying narrative return to that
narrative by the end. This article never did, so I guess I will never know
what happened to the poor lobster that had to flee his home.

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ak39
Is this an example of "evolutionary psychology"?

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goalieca
If someone is coughing and sneezing do you give them a hug? But if they aren't
do you? This is a ridiculous article.

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dsign
When did the rest of the humans ascended? Am I the only one who is still an
animal? OMG!

Or is that a social study article that takes a look to how the majority of the
homo sapiens (the prevalent animal species in this rock) are now under social
distancing recommendations?

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ComplexSpidey
When drastic situations occur, we should fall back to our basics to solve
them. Just like animals it's time to adapt strategic social distancing now.

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29athrowaway
I have heard that dogs go into hiding when they sense they're going to die.

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rswail
"Birds do it, bees do it... even educated fleas do it..."

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diffrinse
Nothing more beautifully concise than the robustness of wild life

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mrfusion
I guess if animals do it, it’s ok to not hug my mother again.

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jacobush
Do you have many fishes?

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werdnapk
[https://www.grammarly.com/blog/fish-
fishes/](https://www.grammarly.com/blog/fish-fishes/)

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mrburton
This proves humans are not animals. We're not that smart ;)

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PostOnce
Sick people are sort of viscerally gross, we're repulsed by wet coughs, even
the sound of vomiting some people can't cope with, not even on a movie -- it's
an evolutionary response, I think. Animals probably have similar feelings
around sick people.

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coldtea
> _even the sound of vomiting some people can 't cope with, not even on a
> movie -- it's an evolutionary response_

The later is probably devolution at play, from having fallen into a too cushy
a life in non-evolutionary time ranges (modern cities)...

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simion314
Can you explain why you think this is a modern thing?

IMO if someone in your group starts vomiting can mean the food we just ate is
bad so would be safe to throw up sooner then later.

I was raised with animals in a village and I have no trouble with cleaning
animal excrement but human excrement's smell instantly has an effect on my
stomach(I had to get some samples for a medical test from my son poop). But
sure there are daily working with such thing and they get used to it.

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coldtea
> _Can you explain why you think this is a modern thing?_

Because past societies were much more open to bodily functions and accepting
some degrees of "dirt".

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simion314
Why do you think so? People were not shitting in the corner of the room like
animals(if they had a choice), they would go shit outside and i am not aware
of any historical ritual involving shit but let me know if there is some
perspective I am missing.

I think there are still many people around the world that are living in
extreme poverty and I am sure they still feel disgusted by shit,bad food and
putrefied bodies - so are you basing your theory on something you read or is
something you think is correct , I will be happy to change my mind so please
inform me.

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Gibbon1
In an article on Cholera or more it's solution in London building sewers the
author reposted a letter to the news paper that castigated the upper classes.
The gist of it was 'You say we don't mind living in filth and stink. Assuredly
we do not like it at all'

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simion314
I would ignore cities since this is a modern thing and people were forced to
live into those bad conditions, let's think about tribes and villages where
you had the space to shit outside, even in cold winter the people would go
outside and take a dump and not shit inside.

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Gibbon1
The old testament says you need to do your business a quarter mile from camp.
And bury it.

