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Talk7 min

How butterflies self-medicate

Jaap de Roode · TED

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About

Just like us, the monarch butterfly sometimes gets sick thanks to a nasty parasite. But biologist Jaap de Roode noticed something interesting about the butterflies he was studying — infected female butterflies would choose to lay their eggs on a specific kind of plant that helped their offspring avoid getting sick. How do they know to choose this plant? Think of it as "the other butterfly effect" — which could teach us to find new medicines for the treatment of human disease.

The talk

  1. How butterflies self-medicate 7 min · TED's player

Credits and licence

Institution
TED
Department
TEDYouth 2014
Speaker
Jaap de Roode
Year
2014
Level
For everyone
Language
English
Subjects
Biology, Medicine and health
Source
TED
Licence
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, as TED states it. Non-commercial use only, and no changed versions. TED's terms
Attribution
TED Talks are licensed by TED under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 International and are shown here in TED's own player, as TED's usage policy asks.
Who can watch
TED gives no rating. Invisible Network shows it to Teens profiles and older, judged from what the source says about it. How courses are placed