Thursday 11 February 2016

Morbid attraction to leopards in toxoplasmosis parasitized chimpanzees


February 9, 2016

Researchers from the Centre d'Écologie Fonctionnelle et Évolutive (CNRS/Université de Montpellier/Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3/EPHE) have shown that chimpanzees infected with toxoplasmosis are attracted by the urine of their natural predators, leopards, but not by urine from other large felines. The study, published on 8 February 2016 in Current Biology, suggests that parasite manipulation by Toxoplasma gondii is specific to each host. It fuels an ongoing debate on the origin of behavioral modifications observed in humans infected with toxoplasmosis: they probably go back to a time when our ancestors were still preyed upon by large felines.

Parasites such as those that cause toxoplasmosis take various pathways, some of them complex, in order to develop into their adult form and reproduce in a so-called definitive host. These pathways may include stages consisting in the infection of an intermediary host. In order to pass from one such host to another, some parasites are able to induce behavioral changes in their hosts. However, this process, known as parasite manipulation, is rarely observed in mammals.

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