Upon our ambassador's return from his visit to Leechian homeworld, he described them as
the most noble and wise species he'd ever encountered, and with a glint in his eye,
encouraged all his fellow high ranking leaders to visit their world to gain a new perspective
and enjoy a complimentary stay at the Saunas of Enlightenment & Implantation.
So we return to the alien civilization series for a look at parasitic & symbiotic aliens.
Bit of tricky topic because 'parasite' is a somewhat vague word as is symbiotic.
The specific biological term isn't super-precise either, but it certainly doesn't mean quite
the same thing as we did when we came up with the word.
Originally it meant 'someone who eats at the table of another', and in that context
it's really about the same as saying 'moocher', a bit of slang that was more popular when
I was young for a person who lives off others without giving anything in return.
This again can be a bit vague, since one could argue any hunter or predator was a parasite
on whatever species they hunted, as opposed to a farmer or herder who is arguably in a
more symbiotic relationship, you eventually eat your flock or crop, but provide food and
protection in the meantime.
So like a lot of terms we look at in science fiction, we want to be careful about over-extending
the definition, for the same reason we wouldn't count a person as a cyborg because they had
a pacemaker or metal filling in a tooth.
The strict biological definition is an organism that lives on or in another organism, the
host, causes it some harm by doing so, and is adapted structurally to this existence.
Which is to say, it's body has evolved heavily to fit this role, often to the point that
it wouldn't be functional without it.
When we think of parasitic aliens though, we tend to think of critters that control
other people's minds or eat and replace us.
Brain bugs who land here and wiggle into your ear, or catch you by yourself and eat you
and mimic you to others.
There are countless films, books, and TV shows that have used this, such as John Carpenter's
1982 Film "The Thing", which is merely the third of four adaptation of the novella
"Who Goes There?", by John W. Campbell, the legendary editor of Astounding Science
Fiction Magazine, where so many of the authors of the Golden age of Science Fiction got their
start.
You can pick up a free copy of "Who Goes There?" and also get a 30-day trial of Audible,
just use my link, Audible.com/Isaac or text Isaac to 500-500.
So we have a lot of examples from science fiction to look at and we'll get through
a number of them today, but it's also worth noting that we have a lot of surprising examples
from nature too.
Some are simply outright gross and entirely harmful to their host, while others actually
provide some benefits, and are arguably symbiotic.
But we tend to assume that critters like this couldn't really evolve a civilization because
they're not really smart themselves.
Indeed many of our examples for today from fiction could only be considered ludicrous
from an evolutionary perspective, and for many others, their parasitic nature is more
behavioral, they only latch on to us and feed in a metaphorical sense.
It's worth mentioning though that quite a few parasites do engage in mind control
or impersonation.
For mind control, we have any number of fairly revolting parasites that either directly infect
the brain or perhaps the spine or sometimes even just the digestive system and create
cravings for a food their host normally would not have.
An alien parasite, for instance, might get in someone's stomach and cause them to have
a craving for minerals heavy in Tungsten, because it needs Tungsten to live.
Many of these are nearly brainless, even compared to their often rather stupid hosts, yet can
annex their motor functions and control them.
We've got a type of fly that infects ants with eggs, which when the larva hatch crawl
into its brain, eats it, and causes it to continue to act and work like normal till
it has a chance to bury itself somewhere so the fly can finish maturing.
This can happen with no brain at all either.
We've got a fungus that infects caterpillars and actually causes them to plant themselves
by burying their head upside down in the ground, and then uses them for nutrients and as a
stalk it sprouts from.
This can also sometimes be a bit symbiotic, we've got a type of acacia tree that ants
love the nectar from, so much so they'll protect that tree from animals and weeds,
which sounds mutually beneficial except the ants not only get addicted to that nectar,
but lose the ability to digest anything else.
Still these are all fairly simple organisms, indeed those last two were mindless, but for
parasitic behavior by impersonation we've got some clever ones.
Perhaps the best known example is the brown headed cowbird, that lays its eggs in other
birds' nest, often after destroying the eggs already there, and is called a brood
parasite, as it relies on other animals to actually raise its young.
There are many species that do this, but the cuckoo stands out as birds are generally considered
the smartest class of animals after mammals, and indeed a few are smarter than many mammals,
which would indicate this is a plausible evolutionary pathway for a species to take on the road
to higher intelligence.
A parallel to brood parasites are social parasites, like certain types of bees that invade a hive,
replace the queen, and let the workers continue to feed them and care for their own young,
that's a strategy that's often implied in a lot of secret alien invasion scenarios
where, for instance, an alien might impersonate a leader.
We've also got Kleptoparasites, that steal food gathered by the host, and that's got
some interesting extreme variations like the tongue eating louse, which infects fish, cuts
off their tongue and latches onto the stump to replace it.
Regular viewers will note that, unlike in many episodes, I did not suggest getting a
drink and snack before beginning, as many of these little monsters are rather unpleasant
to look at or contemplate.
However, there is the symbiosis route, and for instance a species might replace something's
tongue with itself, and steal some food that way, but give a heightened sense of taste
or smell in exchange.
Humans have a huge number of somewhat symbiotic bacteria inside us, ranging from our gut bacteria
that helps us digest food to mitochondria, the separate bacteria-like powerhouses that
live in the thousands in each of our cells and make up one fifth of our typical cell
by volume.
Nor does our intelligence keep us from being mind controlled by something much stupider.
The Influenza virus is often considered parasitic, indeed it's sometimes called the perfect
parasite, in that it's thought to make people infected with it act more social, thus being
around more people and infecting more of them.
Any parasite that relies on its hosts interacting with each other to spread benefits from a
more social species, so for instance one that could cause you to feel drunk might be very
effective.
Keep that one in mind for later, as we'll discuss how alien beer may represent one of
the more likely scenarios for being destroyed by aliens, and yes I did say alien beer.
It still seems very unlikely something could evolve to higher intelligence by being a parasite,
let alone one able to parasite critters with an alien biology.
However here's three caveats on that, first, that impersonation pathway the cuckoo uses
benefits from higher intelligence, and mimicking a critter doesn't necessarily require compatible
biochemistry.
One could imagine something taking a chameleon pathway.
Second, a species that evolved with technology might no longer act in ways their ancestors
did, like I don't tend to go swinging around trees or even chasing mammoths, but it probably
shapes their philosophical outlook and how you'd interact with them.
They might be very predatory or parasitic even if they weren't openly hostile.
Pierson's Puppeteers from Larry Niven's Ringworld and Known Space series are a good
example of that, especially as we get to know them.
They are initially described as tri-sexual, with two genders that are smart and a third
described as non-sentient.
We later find out that it's not really a third gender at all, one fertilizes another,
as normal, who then lays an egg in some unrelated creature with an ovipositor, like a wasp.
This is also our third caveat, because while here we see they've developed a close enough
relationship with that species they lay their eggs in to regard them as part of their race,
it's not hard to imagine more symbiotic versions of this.
Interestingly, while we don't hear much about that egg-bearing host species, odds
are the Puppeteers see to their needs the same as a farmer to his livestock.
This isn't a loving and warm relationship but is arguably mutually beneficial.
You also can have back and forth evolution where parasite and host, or symbiote and host,
push each other to evolve.
This is presumably the case for one of science fiction's best known symbiotic races, the
Trill from Star Trek.
That's a weird evolutionary path, basically a big swimming brain, very akin to to Gou'ald
from the Stargate Franchise, or their nicer cousins, the symbiotic To'kra.
But let's imagine an advanced form of that fly from earlier that gets into ant brains,
eats the brain, and replicates their behavior.
We often say a good parasite is one that never actually kills the host, and of course symbiosis
relies on this too.
So imagine it didn't quite eat the brain but hijacked part of the brain and the nutrient
system feeding it, grows on the ant's back like a big hump, spawns, and flies off and
lays another egg in another ant.
Over time, this could setup a symbiotic relationship with feedback encouraging more intelligence
in both parties, and potentially the sharing of sensory functions, if the parasite had
a better set of eyes, for instance, to spot its host.
This could get very integrated with time and increasingly complex, and potentially even
end with the host intentionally and knowingly transferring mature parasites from other hosts
and sticking them on their kids.
Indeed, being able to put a smarter, older, wiser parasite on your kid to act as a babysitter
and teacher would have some major survival advantages.
With this system in place, that parasite no longer benefits from having any motor system
itself, even to jump onto its host, and actually gains from being smarter and wiser and longer
lived, since those would be the preferred babysitters.
So you could end up with something that was a parasite originally and now was essentially
nothing but a symbiotic brain.
One can imagine them eventually become a high-tech democracy that always elected the brain slugs
since everyone was so used to them as a wise parental authority figure.
It wouldn't be very likely it could infect any other species, let alone an alien one,
but there's some ways around that too.
First, for other species of the same planet, we often talk in sci-fi about colony organisms
or brains that are essentially networks of fungus or algae, such as the Pattern Jugglers
in the Alastair Reynold's Revelation Space series or the Xeno Fungus from Sid Meier's
Alpha Centuari.
One can imagine those as your early brains and hijacking every animal nearby, like that
fungus we mentioned that hijacked caterpillars.
And we certainly have plenty of examples of plants that already somewhat hijack many species
for their survival and reproduction, relying on them for pollination or eating fruit to
be carried away and planted.
So you might have some algae intelligence in a pond that had hijacked every fish and
frog and insect to do its bidding, in which case, increased intelligence is handy since
it lets you better control your minions in what is now essentially a hive mind.
It also has every motivation to kill off any species it can't control.
As to non-hive mind alien parasites, that's harder of course.
Fiction has plenty of examples, the Xenomorphs from the Alien Franchise, who lay eggs in
you that kill you when they hatch, again like a wasp.
We also have the Tyranids from Warhammer 40k, a setting with plenty of parasites including
the Emperor of Mankind, who eats a thousand people every day, though this is arguably
symbiotic.
The Tyranids are definitely not symbiotic, but are a bit more subtle than the Xenomorphs
sometimes by infecting people with what they call Genestealer Cults, hybrids initially
raised by infected parents whose brains have been ravaged so they can't even realize
their cute new bundle of joy is a monster, an example of a brood parasite like the cowbird.
Of course, later the Tyranids just turn everything biological on the planet to soup, and reconstitute
it into more versions of themselves, slightly evolved from their original form - a more
believable way to parasitize a whole planet.
However while they make good fiction, it's hard to imagine how something from another
planet could evolve to take over your brain.
So much like vampires, another parasite of fiction, they make good stories but wouldn't
seem too plausible.
But if you're on alien planets, it usually implies you have space travel which implies
you have technology.
You could engineer yourself to incorporate biological enhancements, possibly to adapt
to a new environment, or even go post-biological.
The Borg from Star Trek would be an example, who act exactly like our algae intelligence
of a moment ago, they steal bodies to act as minions basically.
This is actually an example that could be a credible threat to us, given how divergent
we expect to be from aliens biologically.
As a cyborg, though, you wouldn't really need to interact with the diverse nervous
systems or biologies of your hosts.
You could, in theory, simply locate the motor neurons for the host and puppet their bodies
using electrical impulses, in much the same way as the Gou'ald did but not in a biological
way.
The host could still be aware and living on in their own brains but unable to interact
with the outside world.
There are plenty of other examples too, The Vex from the video game Destiny, arguably
even the Reapers from the Mass Effect Franchise, especially as allegedly in the original plot
they were indeed farming and reaping civilizations to borrow their intelligence or perspective
to solve a problem.
The Borg also steal knowledge, assimilating cultures and technology, and that's an example
of where you might see parasitic tendencies in a non-hostile body-stealing way.
Aliens who love knowledge or poetry or art and visit planets with emerging civilizations
just to get theirs, either by open trade or exploitation or outright invasion.
As we said the term itself originally meant 'someone who eats at the table of another',
a mooch, and the most effective folks at that sort of behavior are the ones who make themselves
welcome.
It's a bit of a gray line, I guess the analogy would be that a travelling storyteller who
visited farmhouses and told stories in exchange for a bed and meal, a symbiotic behavior,
versus one who did that, but burgled their cellar before leaving, but did so in just
small enough quantity and covertly so that they didn't notice and cheerfully bade him
a good trip and welcomed him back when he next returned.
And again, same as a parasite might evolve to be fairly noble, a non-parasite can certainly
exhibit parasitic behaviors, like that storytelIer.
The Stargate Franchise gives us the Gou'ald as an example of parasitic behavior and the
To'kra as symbiotic ones, but it also shows us the vampiric Wraith and even the Aschen,
a society that essentially showed up on other planets and offered lots of technology, including
life extension, Technological Uplifting, but then would wipe out most of the local population
through a sterility plague and in one case reduced the natives to fairly simple and backwater
farmers who supplied food to their empire, unaware they'd been victims of that empire.
Indeed you might subtly invade a planet in stages that way by offering them a genetically
modified crop that was much more productive, that you could also eat, and whose pollen
rendered people stupider or less fertile.
This is a common theme in fiction too, aliens openly greet us, rather than sneaking in,
offer us technology, but have an ulterior motive.
The Taelons from Gene Roddenberry's Earth Final Conflict show up on Earth doing nothing
but good deeds but while not implied to be evil as a species by any means, have a lot
of rather dark projects and members.
One of which was a symbiote they'd give people that shot energy blasts and another
called a Cyber Viral Implant that enhanced cognition and recall, but also tampered with
your mind to make you loyal to them.
So they're friendly alien visitors with sinister plots.
That can go the other way too.
In another TV show, Threshold, there is an apparently evil invader race taking people's
brains over but it's hinted near the end they might be trying to help us out.
Sadly we don't get to find out as it only got one season, in spite of having Brett "Data"
Spiner and Peter "Tyrion" Dinklage in it.
But while we can point out the options technology offers to let you get around the alien issue,
we also shouldn't discount that something might be able to get us as a parasite even
if it wasn't technological.
You don't necessarily need the same biochemistry or adaptation to a specific host organism
to puppet or impersonate someone.
While life probably originated on Earth in deep sea vents or tidal pools, we can't
rule out Panspermia, life distributed around the cosmos by comets or interstellar dust,
permitting a common basic biochemistry.
Moreover, while we can't rule out alternate chemistries for life, it's quite possible
our carbon and water approach is the only viable one, and is almost certainly the easiest
and most common one, those elements being way too common in places where there's plausible
conditions for advanced and diverse life.
Now we often say here that you wouldn't want to ever land on an alien planet, even
in a space suit, since just sneezing could infect a planet to the point of total extinction
in favor of what you had in you.
However, we're not really talking about viruses, the simplest parasite and one usually
so adapted and simplified it can't even infect a species just a few million years
removed from its preferred host.
Hence why you don't often get colds from your cat or dog, but it can happen.
But more importantly, microbes in your body, not viruses, just need basic nutrients, ones
probably present on most life-bearing planets.
Giant viruses could theoretically bridge that gap however.
With more than double the amount of genes of their smaller cousins, they are often mistaken
for bacteria.
As an example, the Pandoravirus is a huge virus with over 2000 genes, most of which
we haven't found anywhere else on earth.
And many viruses have the ability to survive in the harsh conditions of space, often raining
back down on us from above.
With more genes and diversity than smaller viruses, the potential for them to turn symbiotic
and/or parasitic is there.
And the Pandoravirus isn't even the largest or most diverse.
The more specialized a cell is, generally the less adaptable it is in changing conditions.
However these large viruses are so diverse, who knows in what conditions or species they
may one day call home?
One way that such a virus could infect diverse hosts is if it is designed to do just that.
This ties into alien abductions, where an alien race arrives at a planet, collects samples
from its local flora and fauna and then sets about designing a doomsday genetic weapon
that is capable of wiping out every species on that planet, or at least the intelligent
ones.
If you design a big enough genome and have a powerful enough computer to design such
a weapon, I think you could pull that off.
This is similar to the Shadows plague virus in the Babylon 5 universe that decimated Earth
and destroyed many other worlds.
It was automated in that it had a parasitic learning phase where it quietly infected its
hosts and learned from the physiology of its victims without actually harming them and
then adapted itself before dealing the final deadly infection phase that quickly wiped
its hosts out.
The Shadows in the Babylon 5 series also had a mind-controlling puppeteer called a Drakh
Keeper that they modified to the biology of the host and infected them to do their bidding
in a more traditional parasite role.
So, you will probably never shake hands with an alien, since you'll both be potential
walking plague carriers, and their embassy, if they have one in your system at all, might
be on an island but much more likely won't even be on the planet, but on a space station.
With enough technology in play people could presumably visit and maybe eat the food, which
of course they would if they could.
Not only would people want to try exotic alien cuisine on general principle, but big and
expansive empires tend to have the best selection.
They are also fairly likely to try the booze too, which aliens might well have.
So diplomats and traders are likely to be up there in person, and eat and drink the
stuff even if it requires decontamination procedures on your guts by some device of
a unsettlingly tentacular nature.
When they get home, they are likely to rave about how excellent it is, probably even if
it wasn't.
Of course you can't let anything with a live culture down on the planet and you need
to be sure all the microbes are gone.
You don't want those microbes down here and the aliens might well be smart and benevolent
folks who don't want that either.
You could, in theory, brew up vats of beer or yogurt or cheese using alien microbes,
and maybe safely by having the place be off-world or like a biohazard lab, but odds are it would
be banned on general principle.
Now as everyone knows, the only thing that makes a cigar or drink better is if it comes
from some place under embargo and sanction, and let's be honest, if someone offered
you a forbidden alien beer, you are going to have a rough time saying no and aren't
likely to report them.
This also means there's now a black market for it, only anyone supplying it isn't likely
to be making it in an ultra-safe biohazard lab but rather brewing it up in their bathtub
like moonshine.
So next thing you know, you've been invaded by aliens and your ecosystem wrecked, not
because they're parasitic or bad guys, but because someone couldn't resist having a
drink.
And who can blame them, Alien Beer is to die for.
All right, so some food for thought about alien ecosystems and parasitic aliens.
Personally I don't think we need worry about it much, even ignoring my usual skepticism
about us encountering any aliens civilizations at all, because I do think brain bugs or mimics
able to originate in alien ecosystems but still get humans is a pretty unlikely evolutionary
scenario, biologically or culturally.
This is especially true when it comes to the divergence of biological systems, even here
on our own home planet and other planets are likely to be so much more different from our
own.
However, it's not something we can completely rule out.
Regardless, it definitely makes for some good stories, and one of the best of those is John
W. Campbell's classic novella, "Who goes There?" which inspired so many more stories.
In spite of being a classic that's been turned into popular film's many times, the
story varies from them quite a lot and is not one we can discuss without ruinous spoilers,
so I'll limit myself to saying you'll still be surprised even if you've seen all
the film adaptations, and you will quickly realize why John W. Campbell is considered
one of the grandfathers of science fiction whose work explores so many fascinating concepts.
You can get a free copy of "Who Goes There?" today, just use my link in this episode's
description, Audible.com/Isaac or text Isaac to 500-500 to get a free book and 30 day free
trial, and that book is yours to keep, whether you stay on with Audible or not.
And while you're there, you can explore their catalogue, and find some more books
you can listen to and enjoy, while still out enjoying your summer.
So we talked a lot about alien biology and Earth's biology, and next week we'll be
taking a deeper look at ecology in space, as we consider how you would move large and
complete colonies on interstellar ships to colonize other worlds, in "Exporting Earth".
We also talked today about alien invasions, and we'll be looking at that and other futuristic
warfare scenarios in two weeks, when we examine the use of drones, remote controlled and autonomous,
as weapons in "Attack of the Drones" For alerts when those and other episodes come
out, make sure to subscribe to the channel.
And if you enjoyed this episode, hit the like button and share it with others.
Until next time, thanks for watching, and have a Great Week!
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