Where did STI/STDs come from? Since they are created via giving to someone who has already contracted it
So where did they originate from?
In: Biology
To quote a genius, “Life…uh…finds a way…”
It’s complicated though, because viruses (lots of STIs are viral) aren’t technically alive.
The easiest way to think about it though is in terms of ecological niches. Humans are a big ass niche, and sex is a good way to spread between hosts, so we get STDs. It’s not because the STI cares, it just wants to colonize new territory, and it has various strategies for doing so, and, unfortunately, they’re often unpleasant for us the hosts..
The first case of syphilis in a European was probably caused by them raping a native American. It’s one of the few diseases that went the other way around during that exchange.
To be blunt. You always got sexual transmit microbe. In fact microbe is everywhere and you got it all the times
Only very little of them mutated and become disease. And very much little of those can spread via contact
But normal skin have more protective layer. Unlike around soft membrane and bodily orifice. So sexual is one of an act that a little bit easier to transmit disease than normal contact. It also an act that require same kind of organ to contact with each other
But once it exist and spread it then explode in number
STDs are actually caused by tiny things we call microorganisms and viruses. These tiny things were around for a very long time before human life ever evolved. And even as we evolved, so did they. In fact, these tiny things evolved a way to live in, and hitch a ride on, our bodies in order to survive and make more of themselves. Similar to sneezing/coughing when you have a cold, STDs are transmitted from body-to-body in whatever way they can hitch a ride.
[removed]
It’s basically just a genetic mutation, the same way every other organism or disease evolves/is created. They just happen to be a type of infection that is most easily transmitted through sexual fluids.
An interesting way to think about it is say you have 6 dice and need to roll a 25 or higher to survive. If you get a 36 tho you survive and thrive. It’s also like Yahtzee where if you get a good roll you can keep your good dice and reroll the bad ones. If you get 4 6’s and 2 3’s, you can reroll the 3s and it might be better might be worse, but then you only keep the good ones so it slowly improves. A trait like being sexually transmitted would be for example a 35 because it’s really good and they are going to keep that. Basically there were tons of versions of the disease that weren’t sexually transmitted and then once one coukd be, it transmitted all over the place and spread and became common.
In actuality there are millions and millions of variations of every disease. Often two people with the same strain of the same disease have two slightly different diseases, it’s just not different enough that it really matters. The ones that do the best are the ones that spread the most and become common
Given that “OF account” is apparently too short an answer and gets automatically removed from this sub, I’ll prolong it a bit: this poster is an OF account. This is to get engagement to their OF.
That is all.
I mean it’s just the way these viruses evolved to propagate. The same way the common cold would propagate via coughing.
Maybe some ancient viruses only knew how to find a host via just lying on the ground until someone licked you up.
But then one virus evolved to infiltrate a saliva with its clones. So it began propagating much faster, completely displacing all of the “laying on the ground” type.
Some evolved to kill a host fast, while the others evolved to travel silently, making a host spread the virus to other hosts before dying. So yeah. Exchange of fluids during sex is kind of a good conduit for a virus to spread. And we only really thought of the way to help it in the last 100 years or so.
Imagine, if you will, a time when all life was nearly as simple as it could be. A single cell, no nucleus, no wall, just a fatty layer that divided it from the world.
Over time, as these primitive cells sought out food, they developed a way to communicate. They’d send out little packets of RNA. This was to help others get together for common food sources. Not every cell understood these, though, and didn’t provide an easy way to gather the packets.
A new envelope was developed, as things happen. That one became the first virus. Initially it did what it was meant to do: communicate through RNA. Eventually, though, some mutation in the packet caused the newly created packet to become deadly. Instead of communicating, it merely destroyed the host cell to create more of its kind.
The cells evolved to prevent this from happening, but the virus also evolved along side, coming up with new keys. Now, to understand this, some number of the viruses simply had a mutation that already worked with the new locks, but didn’t work with the old. That’s just how evolution works. Mutations that work.
So as the cells mutated, reproduced, changed… we get more complex life. The viruses remain. They’ve mutated to infect different cells. The mutations work on THIS cell, but not on THAT cell. Eventually we get animals. The cells that are effected by THIS virus are all reproductive. Since this happens to be a major point of contact between animals that are very similar (um…usually) the virus was able to keep reproducing. And so, an STD.
The difference between an STD and every other kind is merely where it reproduces. This will apply for fungus and bacteria as well, BTW. Not all STI are viral. It’s going to be pretty much the same story, though. There was time before sexual reproduction where these diseases were doing their thing. There was a time before that thing infected something where it could sex all day without risk, but their junk touched a thing and poof, it adapted.
One day COVID wasn’t in humans. The next year it’s all over the planet in dogs, cats, deer… This is pretty much the same thing, but slower.
[removed]
Latest Answers