Douglas Main,
Staff Writer
Date: 05 April
2013 Time: 04:48 PM ET
The parasite Toxoplasma
gondii is a crazy protozoa that lives in most warm-blooded animals but
that prefers to live in cats, where it can sexually reproduce.
To return to
its feline haunts, it can manipulate the behavior of mice and other animals it
infects. It can, for example, make rats unafraid — even sexually
attracted — to the smell of cat urine. (You can't make this stuff up.)
"To
complete the Toxo lifecycle, an infected animal has to be eaten by a cat," writes researcher Michael Eisen on
his blog. "This creates a conflict of interest between Toxo, who wants its
host to be eaten by a cat, and the host, who would rather NOT be eaten by a
cat." (Indeed—the age old dilemma.)
But how does
it accomplish this nefarious mind control? Nobody knows exactly, but
Eisen's student Wendy Ingram is determined to find out. She just completed a new study, not yet published in a
peer-reviewed journal, which found that even an attenuated, or weakened, form
of the parasite caused mice to permanently not fear mice, presumably becoming
aroused forevermore by even the slightest whiff of cat piss. "This would
seem to refute – or at least make less likely – models in which the behavior
effects is the result of direct physical action of parasites on specific parts of
the brain," Eisen writes of the finding.
All of this
got me musing: Is it possible that Toxoplasma (which infects about
one-third of people, by some estimates) is the reason that people
loves cats so much? Are all cat-lovers parasite-addled sickos? Could it make us
WANT TO BE EATEN by cats?
Just some food
for thought.
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