On supporting science journalism
If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
The capability to seek out medicinal plants was thought to be limited to creatures with advanced brains; for instance, chimpanzees harboring intestinal worms swallow bristly leaves to scrape the parasites from their guts. Now researchers at Wesleyan University and their colleagues find that woolly bear caterpillars (Grammia incorrupta) also self-medicate when ill. Caterpillars infested with parasitic fly maggots ate roughly twice as much alkaloid (specifically, pyrrolizidine alkaloid) as uninfested ones; such toxins naturally exist in bloodroot and other caterpillar food plants. As a result, roughly 20 percent more of the infested caterpillars survived into adulthood as compared with infested caterpillars that did not munch on the medicine. The findings, the first known instance of invertebrate self-medication, appear in the March 10 PLoS ONE.
Subscribe to Support Independent Journalism
Great science journalism requires human expertise, time, effort and creativity. And it costs money. That’s why I and the journalists here at Scientific American hope you’ll join our community.
When you subscribe, you are supporting staff and freelance journalists who are passionate about telling science stories that are true, important and compelling. Our editors and reporters are often experts in their fields, which means they understand the nuances of big discoveries and can untangle the breakthroughs from the hype. With a subscription, you are also supporting rigorous fact-checking to ensure the words we publish are precise and accurate. And you’re supporting original illustrations, graphics and photos that bring you closer to an advanced laboratory, an ice sheet in Antarctica or a space mission in orbit. You’re helping us craft other types of high-quality journalism as well: Our newsletters are carefully written, edited and curated by staffers you have or will come to know and love. Our Science Quickly podcast is based on original reporting, collaboration with editors and scientists and exacting production.
Subscriptions keep this engine running so we can continue to deliver thoughtful, rigorous and independent science journalism to you. In an era of viral misinformation, this work is crucial. If you value what we do, I hope you’ll consider joining us as a subscriber
