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Health and the avoidance of macroparasites: a preliminary cross-cultural study

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Abstract

Some evolutionary explanations of cross-cultural differences propose that human personality is caused by pathogen stress. Both xenophobia and ethnocentrism evolved under conditions with high parasite prevalence. Further, inter-individual variation in disgust or fear of parasites is expected to be influenced by human health, where healthy people should express lower disgust sensitivity to parasites. We examined inter-individual variation of children’s fear, disgust and self-perceived danger between two distinct cultures differing in overall pathogen prevalence. We found that children were able to distinguish between disease-relevant and disease-irrelevant groups of invertebrates and that children in regions with high pathogen prevalence expressed greater fear, disgust and self-perceived danger of all animals, irrespective of disease threat. After controlling for confounding factors, better health of children was associated with lower perceived danger of disease-relevant animals. Gender differences were found only in conditions with low pathogen stress. Our results support the idea that cross-cultural differences in human perception of animals are mediated by pathogen threat. Further research is necessary to investigate causal relationship between human health and avoidance of potentially hazardous animals.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Val Curtis for her insightful comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript. Mark Schaller kindly provided us with historically available data for pathogen prevalence. Two anonymous referees provided helpful comments on earlier draft of this manuscript. Finally, we would like to thank Esma Usak for perspectives relating to health education on the questionnaires.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Zoology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Dúbravská cesta 9, 84506, Bratislava, Slovakia

    Pavol Prokop, Muhammet Usak & Jana Fančovičová

  2. Department of Biology, University of Trnava, Priemyselná 4, P.O. Box 9, 91843, Trnava, Slovakia

    Pavol Prokop & Jana Fančovičová

  3. Department of Science Education, Faculty of Education, Dumlupinar University, Merkez Kampus, Kutahya, Turkey

    Muhammet Usak

Authors
  1. Pavol Prokop
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  2. Muhammet Usak
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  3. Jana Fančovičová
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Pavol Prokop.

Appendix: List of species used in Powerpoint presentation

Appendix: List of species used in Powerpoint presentation

Disease-relevant adult insects: dengue mosquito (Aedes aegpti), blue bottle fly (Calliphora vomitoria), tse-tse fly (Glossina palpalis), German cockroach (Blatella germanica), red-tailed flesh fly (Sarcophaga haemorrhoidalis).

Endoparasites: common roundworm (Ascaris lumbricoides), Medina worm (Dracunculus medinensis), beef tapeworm (Taenia saginata), human pinworm (Enterobius vermicularis), common liver fluke (Fasciola hepatica).

Ectoparasites: bedbug (Cimex lecturarius), common tick (Ixodes ricinus), human louse (Pediculus humanus), medicinal leech (Hirudo medicinalis), human flea (Pulex irritans).

Disease-irrelevant adult insects: rhinoceros beetle (Oryctes nasicornis), azure damselfly (Coenagrion puella), ladybird beetle (Coccinella septempunctata), duetting grasshopper (Chorthippus biguttulus), Old World swallowtail (Papilio machaon).

Insect larvae/earthworm: mosquito (Culex sp.), green pug (Chloroclystis rectangulata), common earthworm (Lumbricus terrestris), yellow mealworm (Tenebrio molitor), ladybird beetle (Coccinella septempunctata).

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Prokop, P., Usak, M. & Fančovičová, J. Health and the avoidance of macroparasites: a preliminary cross-cultural study. J Ethol 28, 345–351 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10164-009-0195-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10164-009-0195-3

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