3 ms·
A fun idea about cats on the internet. Toxoplasma is a real brain parasite that infects us, and cats and rats. It changes behaviour of the host to want to sprea
by thinkingemote 5y ago
A fun idea about cats on the internet. Toxoplasma is a real brain parasite that infects us, and cats and rats. It changes behaviour of the host to want to spread. Human males are meant to be more risky when infected, for example.
It infects rats to make them less afraid of cats. We get it from cats. Maybe cats are less afraid of us? There's data that suggest that a third of all people are infected. Perhaps these are cat lovers. Perhaps when we are infected we promote and show off our cats so that other humans get infected.
Thus cat videos and pictures on the internet are a by product of the Toxoplasma brain parasite.
- rich_sasha 5y agoReminds me of this: https://xkcd.com/1664/ https://xkcd.com/1664/
- yreg 5y ago>There's data that suggest that a third of all people are infected. Perhaps these are cat lovers. Sounds like something that would be both extraordinary and easy to find a correlation if it was true, no?
- newsbinator 5y ago> Are Cats Responsible for “Cat Ladies”? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-cats-responsible-for-ldquo-cat-ladies-rdquo/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-cats-responsi...