5 ms·

Toxoplasma Gondii significantly alters wolf behavior

142 points by anigbrowl 2y ago

Imnimo 2y ago
This is legitimately super interesting, but I can't help imagining a wave of "alpha male bootcamps" where you pay thousands of dollars to handle cat feces for a weekend in the hopes of being infected.
- chasil 2y ago
  You can be infected by undercooked pork. If you own a cat, the litter box will be the primary vector. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#Preventing_infection https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#Preventing...
  - cm2012 2y ago
    Only if its an outdoor cat, litter box transmission is pretty rare compared to other causes.
- nativeit 2y ago
  We’re calling it “Litter Blox Tactical Training - Bury Your Weakness & Scat”, memberships start at just $1999.99/year!
- rdtsc 2y ago
  I immediately thought of the Panther Cologne from Anchorman: "60% of the time, it works every time!" (Now with scientific evidence!)
- DontchaKnowit 2y ago
  I've always thought lead supplements for making men more chadly would legit probably sell in certain circles.
- wruza 2y ago
  You can sell supplements with “TP neuro extract”, with action identical to natural toxoplasmosis without infection. Avoids legal issues and makes them more alpha on a subscription basis.
infecto 2y ago
Was there not research in the past few years that took a look at motorcycle deaths and there was some correlation between the individuals that did not wear helmets and those that were also infected with toxoplasmosis?
- Terr_ 2y ago
  Hmm, it seems there are two different Toxoplasmosis/Accident narratives floating around out there: (1) That infection causes risky behavior and (2) that infection harms reaction-times so that accidents are more-likely or more-severe. I suppose both could be true, but isolating the effect(s) means different kinds of studies.
- stevenwoo 2y ago
  I want to believe it because it makes a great science story and it makes good reading but who knows? This meta analysis only shows there is some correlation with behavior changes (only schizophrenia seems to consistently have some correlation) and discusses the difficulties in doing studies in pretty easy to understand way IMHO, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8548174/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8548174/ The very high 30 percent infection rate among the world population is kind of like like herpes, which at first thought would seem to confound things, though at a glance at a few, the studies were careful to separate infected versus non-infected.
- eitland 2y ago
  I remember reading about it, probably in a farming related book from the nineties.
shagie 2y ago
From a bit ago... "but why does it infect humans?" https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/160209090622.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/160209090622.h... Toxoplasmosis: Morbid attraction to leopards in parasitized chimpanzees > Researchers 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 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.
- dTal 2y ago
  Why do they say it's "specific to each host" and not some ultra-simple algorithm like "flip the sign on $PREDATOR_FEAR_COEFFICIENT"? One might suppose that "fear of predators" is a highly conserved, re-used mechanism across a wide variety of organisms that specialize it to different predators as an "implementation detail", and toxoplasmosis attacks some feature common to everything rather than having a huge database of different creatures and their predators. Perhaps that is what they mean, but it's an odd way to put it.
  - shagie 2y ago
    > The primary mechanisms of T. gondii–induced behavioral changes in rodents occur through epigenetic remodeling in neurons that govern the relevant behaviors (e.g. hypomethylation of arginine vasopressin-related genes in the medial amygdala, which greatly decrease predator aversion). And https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#Behavioral_differences_of_infected_hosts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#Behavioral_d... It's got a whole list of different things that it does. Yes, some of that could be "epigenetic tweaking a gene that looks like this" would have different effects in different species (and even different genotypes - different effects for men and women). Changing the epigenetic of the regulatory genes can do different things in different species where the regulation genes have taken on different functions. Masterpiece of epigenetic engineering – how Toxoplasma gondii reprogrammes host brains to change fear to sexual attraction - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mec.13006 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mec.13006
ineedaj0b 2y ago
Is there a cheap test for this? I don't wanna run out to my Dr. and seem like a complete nut but I do worry I got this. I am an absolute idiot
- lkbm 2y ago
  Yes. I don't know exactly how cheap, but it's a big risk for pregnant women (not to have it, but to get infected while pregnant), so they have tests available, and it was affordable enough that my fiancee did it as part of her a prenatal screening.
- dvh 2y ago
  Are you attracted to cougars in your area?
  - kbenson 2y ago
    No judgement here. If I was dating, that would be my dating pool... In all seriousness, since this topic comes around every couple years, I've always wondered if we tested different populations of people based on career if we'd see some correlation. Cats are fairly ubiquitous across populations (but knowing if there's a higher prevalence in some would be important), so there's at least a chance for most people to be exposed I think.
    - shagie 2y ago
      https://slate.com/technology/2010/07/could-a-brain-parasite-found-in-cats-help-soccer-teams-win-at-the-world-cup.html https://slate.com/technology/2010/07/could-a-brain-parasite-... > Landon Donovan Needs a Cat > Could a brain parasite found in cats help soccer teams win at the World Cup? > ... > If we set aside the qualifying rounds (in which teams can play to a draw) and focus on matches with a clear winner, the results are very compelling. In the knockout round of this year’s tournament, eight out of eight winners so far have been the teams whose countries had higher rates of Toxo infection. If we go back to the 2006 World Cup, seven out of eight knockout-round winners could be predicted by higher Toxo rates. The one exception to the rule was Brazil’s defeat of Ghana, a match between two nations that each have very high rates. (Aside from having the winningest team in World Cup history, Brazil has quite a few cases of Toxo: Two out of three Brazilians are infected.) > It gets better. Rank the top 25 FIFA team countries by Toxo rate and you get, in order from the top: Brazil (67 percent), Argentina (52 percent), France (45 percent), Spain (44 percent), and Germany (43 percent). Collectively, these are the teams responsible for eight of the last 10 World Cup overall winners. Spain, the only one of the group never to have won a cup, is no subpar outlier—the Spaniards have the most World Cup victories of any perpetual runner-up. ... and yes, that that's not a science paper. Slate is far from being a paper hosted at NIH. ... so... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7928503/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7928503/ > Potential linkage between Toxoplasma gondii infection and physical education scores of college students > ... > The overall seroprevalence of T. gondii was 11.5%. The main risk factors related to T. gondii infection in college students were cat in the household and gardening or agriculture activity. Furthermore, in the basketball group and the soccer group, scores of T. gondii seropositive students were significantly higher than those of seronegative students, while in other sports there was no difference between scores of T. gondii-infected students and T. gondii uninfected students.
ncgl 2y ago
I love stuff like this, but I can't help but wonder much of this is simply editorialization on top of natural selection. Do infected wolves really take more risks? Or are we just connecting two dots with a thin bro science understanding of evolution? It seems impossible to know when you're looking for a broad narrative that fits how genes are spread
- ekianjo 2y ago
  yeah. there could be confounding factors.
- rossdavidh 2y ago
  No doubt it could be over-interpreted, but seeing toxo correlate with risk-taking behavior in enough different species, does seem to increase the plausibility, otherwise we need special pleading that we have several different spurious correlations all pointing in the same direction. However, and maybe this is what you're getting at, it could be that risk-taking individuals are more likely to get infected with toxo? Telling the difference between those two ideas would be harder, although in lab rat experiments you could control for it.
- colechristensen 2y ago
  There is a lot of evidence out there for diseases and specifically parasites modifying host behavior, toxo does indeed settle in the brain, and there is quite a lot of evidence for toxo specifically modifying behavior in different host species. Doubt is always healthy but this one is not at all hard to believe.
- chasil 2y ago
  Not at all, this is hard science. "This asymptomatic state of infection is referred to as a latent infection, and it has been associated with numerous subtle behavioral, psychiatric, and personality alterations in humans. "Behavioral changes observed between infected and non-infected humans include a decreased aversion to cat urine (but with divergent trajectories by gender) and an increased risk of schizophrenia. Preliminary evidence has suggested that T. gondii infection may induce some of the same alterations in the human brain as those observed in rodents. Many of these associations have been strongly debated and newer studies have found them to be weak, concluding: "On the whole, there was little evidence that T. gondii was related to increased risk of psychiatric disorder, poor impulse control, personality aberrations, or neurocognitive impairment." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#Risk_factors_for_human_infection https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#Risk_facto... However: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10317747/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10317747/
thunkle 2y ago
Effects of Toxoplasma on Human Behavior https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2526142/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2526142/ >> the men were more likely to disregard rules and were more expedient, suspicious, jealous, and dogmatic. The personality of infected women, by contrast, showed higher warmth and higher superego strength (factors A and G on Cattell's 16PF), suggesting that they were more warm hearted, outgoing, conscientious, persistent, and moralistic. Both men and women had significantly higher apprehension (factor O) compared with the uninfected controls.
- lieblingautor 2y ago
  It's weird that this infection makes one more risk-embracing and "likely to disregard rules," but the subjects score higher in the apprehension factor. Doesn't that mean they are somehow becoming adventurous worrywarts? (Or did I misunderstand something here).
- Daub 2y ago
  Does this sound that the infection is exaggerating natural sex difference?
awaythrow999 2y ago
I remember an article in the Economist between 2000-2010 claiming this was the cause of French drivers acting more reckless and aggressive in traffic compared to other countries. Not a subscriber anymore so sadly can't find the link in their archive.
etiam 2y ago
Looks like enough people are coming sufficiently fresh to this topic to benefit: Professor Robert Sapolsky at Stanford had Toxoplasma and it's manipulation behaviors as a research interest for a period. He's a successful popular science writer and I think many people appreciate his informal lecture style as entertaining. I don't remember which are the best presentations he's given on T. gondii but here's one that appears to be high-ranking on search at least https://www.edge.org/conversation/robert_sapolsky-toxo https://www.edge.org/conversation/robert_sapolsky-toxo
DoreenMichele 2y ago
...infection with the parasite Toxoplasma gondii makes wolves 46 times more likely to become a pack leader. And wolves are social creatures, so this may have substantial impact on ecosystems in ways they are just beginning to make guesses about.
deanresin 2y ago
My ex girlfriend's family used to have their cat litters right next to the kitchen table. Any bad behavior or decisions I've made since then I'm going to blame on her and my "taxoplasmosis".
- setgree 2y ago
  That’s gross regardless of whether it led to you being mind controlled!
- chasil 2y ago
  Toxoplasmosis is a debilitating disease which is suffered by those who cannot control a latent infection of toxoplasma gondii. This is likely not you. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis The behavioral changes are a different matter.
  - odyssey7 2y ago
    I feel that naming one specific presentation of an infection for the pathogen isn’t so tenable now that we’ve realized there are multiple presentations. Consider, is subclinical TB not TB?
  - aitchnyu 2y ago
    So Toxo makes you subscribe to too many cat subs and overwhelmingly likely to not harm you?
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  Taxoplasmosis is where you look at how much tax you pay vs what you get, and freak out.
samaltmanfried 2y ago
You're far more likely to become infected with T.gondii from eating rare meat than you are from having a pet cat. Infection is more highly correlated with diet than cat ownership, with populations from countries which eat more rare meats having much higher rates.
quantified 2y ago
Makes me think of The Screwfly Solution [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screwfly_Solution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screwfly_Solution]
cm2012 2y ago
There's so much BS around toxoplasmosis online. Here's corrections for two common misconceptions: 1) Almost everyone who has it got it from eating undercooked meat, not from cats. France has the highest rate of toxoplasmosis in the world because of their propensity for rare meats: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5312802/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5312802/. 2) Unless your cat lived a significant part of it's life as an outdoor cat, it is very unlikely to have the parasite (like any parasite).
- cm2012 2y ago
  Corrected link: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1118145/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1118145/
colechristensen 2y ago
There were quite a few studies researching the effectiveness of a blood pressure medicine called guanabenz against the latent stage of toxo with a significant decrease in brain lesions. It was discontinued and no longer manufactured for sale in the US.
nobrains 2y ago
Internet is full of cat pics. People love them. Now, in the world of cryptocurrencies, although meme coins started with dogs (doge), cat meme coins are now catching up to if not equal to dog meme coins in popularity and marketcap. Examples here: https://coinmarketcap.com/view/cat-themed/ https://coinmarketcap.com/view/cat-themed/ . Loud thought: Far fetched idea, but do you think there is a REMOTE possibility that Toxoplasma Gondii could be the cause of that? The cause of humans elevating imaginary cat tokens to god-like status by putting enormous amounts of money on them?
jshaqaw 2y ago
Some tech bros gonna stop reading at the “more likely to be alpha” part and start snaking on kitty litter.
Nasrudith 2y ago
In contrast, foxes who are infected become 'dopey' and almost domesticated. Lack of fear, increased affection, and showing some signs of obliviousness like food left hanging out of their mouths. Also sadly some other effects like it being potentially lethal. Even treated foxes still show signs of frankly, brain damage and are considered unreleasable. It is interesting that an animal close to cats (in strategy and prey), and their larger relatives are affected so differently.

142 points by anigbrowl 2y ago

This is legitimately super interesting, but I can't help imagining a wave of "alpha male bootcamps" where you pay thousands of dollars to handle cat feces for a weekend in the hopes of being infected.

chasil 2y ago
You can be infected by undercooked pork. If you own a cat, the litter box will be the primary vector. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#Preventing_infection https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#Preventing...
- cm2012 2y ago
  Only if its an outdoor cat, litter box transmission is pretty rare compared to other causes.
nativeit 2y ago
We’re calling it “Litter Blox Tactical Training - Bury Your Weakness & Scat”, memberships start at just $1999.99/year!
rdtsc 2y ago
I immediately thought of the Panther Cologne from Anchorman: "60% of the time, it works every time!" (Now with scientific evidence!)
DontchaKnowit 2y ago
I've always thought lead supplements for making men more chadly would legit probably sell in certain circles.
wruza 2y ago
You can sell supplements with “TP neuro extract”, with action identical to natural toxoplasmosis without infection. Avoids legal issues and makes them more alpha on a subscription basis.

infecto 2y ago

Was there not research in the past few years that took a look at motorcycle deaths and there was some correlation between the individuals that did not wear helmets and those that were also infected with toxoplasmosis?

Terr_ 2y ago
Hmm, it seems there are two different Toxoplasmosis/Accident narratives floating around out there: (1) That infection causes risky behavior and (2) that infection harms reaction-times so that accidents are more-likely or more-severe. I suppose both could be true, but isolating the effect(s) means different kinds of studies.
stevenwoo 2y ago
I want to believe it because it makes a great science story and it makes good reading but who knows? This meta analysis only shows there is some correlation with behavior changes (only schizophrenia seems to consistently have some correlation) and discusses the difficulties in doing studies in pretty easy to understand way IMHO, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8548174/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8548174/ The very high 30 percent infection rate among the world population is kind of like like herpes, which at first thought would seem to confound things, though at a glance at a few, the studies were careful to separate infected versus non-infected.
eitland 2y ago
I remember reading about it, probably in a farming related book from the nineties.

shagie 2y ago

From a bit ago... "but why does it infect humans?" https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/160209090622.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/160209090622.h... Toxoplasmosis: Morbid attraction to leopards in parasitized chimpanzees > Researchers 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 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.

dTal 2y ago
Why do they say it's "specific to each host" and not some ultra-simple algorithm like "flip the sign on $PREDATOR_FEAR_COEFFICIENT"? One might suppose that "fear of predators" is a highly conserved, re-used mechanism across a wide variety of organisms that specialize it to different predators as an "implementation detail", and toxoplasmosis attacks some feature common to everything rather than having a huge database of different creatures and their predators. Perhaps that is what they mean, but it's an odd way to put it.
- shagie 2y ago
  > The primary mechanisms of T. gondii–induced behavioral changes in rodents occur through epigenetic remodeling in neurons that govern the relevant behaviors (e.g. hypomethylation of arginine vasopressin-related genes in the medial amygdala, which greatly decrease predator aversion). And https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#Behavioral_differences_of_infected_hosts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#Behavioral_d... It's got a whole list of different things that it does. Yes, some of that could be "epigenetic tweaking a gene that looks like this" would have different effects in different species (and even different genotypes - different effects for men and women). Changing the epigenetic of the regulatory genes can do different things in different species where the regulation genes have taken on different functions. Masterpiece of epigenetic engineering – how Toxoplasma gondii reprogrammes host brains to change fear to sexual attraction - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mec.13006 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mec.13006

ineedaj0b 2y ago

Is there a cheap test for this? I don't wanna run out to my Dr. and seem like a complete nut but I do worry I got this. I am an absolute idiot

lkbm 2y ago
Yes. I don't know exactly how cheap, but it's a big risk for pregnant women (not to have it, but to get infected while pregnant), so they have tests available, and it was affordable enough that my fiancee did it as part of her a prenatal screening.
dvh 2y ago
Are you attracted to cougars in your area?
- kbenson 2y ago
  No judgement here. If I was dating, that would be my dating pool... In all seriousness, since this topic comes around every couple years, I've always wondered if we tested different populations of people based on career if we'd see some correlation. Cats are fairly ubiquitous across populations (but knowing if there's a higher prevalence in some would be important), so there's at least a chance for most people to be exposed I think.
  - shagie 2y ago
    https://slate.com/technology/2010/07/could-a-brain-parasite-found-in-cats-help-soccer-teams-win-at-the-world-cup.html https://slate.com/technology/2010/07/could-a-brain-parasite-... > Landon Donovan Needs a Cat > Could a brain parasite found in cats help soccer teams win at the World Cup? > ... > If we set aside the qualifying rounds (in which teams can play to a draw) and focus on matches with a clear winner, the results are very compelling. In the knockout round of this year’s tournament, eight out of eight winners so far have been the teams whose countries had higher rates of Toxo infection. If we go back to the 2006 World Cup, seven out of eight knockout-round winners could be predicted by higher Toxo rates. The one exception to the rule was Brazil’s defeat of Ghana, a match between two nations that each have very high rates. (Aside from having the winningest team in World Cup history, Brazil has quite a few cases of Toxo: Two out of three Brazilians are infected.) > It gets better. Rank the top 25 FIFA team countries by Toxo rate and you get, in order from the top: Brazil (67 percent), Argentina (52 percent), France (45 percent), Spain (44 percent), and Germany (43 percent). Collectively, these are the teams responsible for eight of the last 10 World Cup overall winners. Spain, the only one of the group never to have won a cup, is no subpar outlier—the Spaniards have the most World Cup victories of any perpetual runner-up. ... and yes, that that's not a science paper. Slate is far from being a paper hosted at NIH. ... so... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7928503/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7928503/ > Potential linkage between Toxoplasma gondii infection and physical education scores of college students > ... > The overall seroprevalence of T. gondii was 11.5%. The main risk factors related to T. gondii infection in college students were cat in the household and gardening or agriculture activity. Furthermore, in the basketball group and the soccer group, scores of T. gondii seropositive students were significantly higher than those of seronegative students, while in other sports there was no difference between scores of T. gondii-infected students and T. gondii uninfected students.

ncgl 2y ago

I love stuff like this, but I can't help but wonder much of this is simply editorialization on top of natural selection. Do infected wolves really take more risks? Or are we just connecting two dots with a thin bro science understanding of evolution? It seems impossible to know when you're looking for a broad narrative that fits how genes are spread

ekianjo 2y ago
yeah. there could be confounding factors.
rossdavidh 2y ago
No doubt it could be over-interpreted, but seeing toxo correlate with risk-taking behavior in enough different species, does seem to increase the plausibility, otherwise we need special pleading that we have several different spurious correlations all pointing in the same direction. However, and maybe this is what you're getting at, it could be that risk-taking individuals are more likely to get infected with toxo? Telling the difference between those two ideas would be harder, although in lab rat experiments you could control for it.
colechristensen 2y ago
There is a lot of evidence out there for diseases and specifically parasites modifying host behavior, toxo does indeed settle in the brain, and there is quite a lot of evidence for toxo specifically modifying behavior in different host species. Doubt is always healthy but this one is not at all hard to believe.
chasil 2y ago
Not at all, this is hard science. "This asymptomatic state of infection is referred to as a latent infection, and it has been associated with numerous subtle behavioral, psychiatric, and personality alterations in humans. "Behavioral changes observed between infected and non-infected humans include a decreased aversion to cat urine (but with divergent trajectories by gender) and an increased risk of schizophrenia. Preliminary evidence has suggested that T. gondii infection may induce some of the same alterations in the human brain as those observed in rodents. Many of these associations have been strongly debated and newer studies have found them to be weak, concluding: "On the whole, there was little evidence that T. gondii was related to increased risk of psychiatric disorder, poor impulse control, personality aberrations, or neurocognitive impairment." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#Risk_factors_for_human_infection https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#Risk_facto... However: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10317747/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10317747/

thunkle 2y ago

Effects of Toxoplasma on Human Behavior https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2526142/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2526142/ >> the men were more likely to disregard rules and were more expedient, suspicious, jealous, and dogmatic. The personality of infected women, by contrast, showed higher warmth and higher superego strength (factors A and G on Cattell's 16PF), suggesting that they were more warm hearted, outgoing, conscientious, persistent, and moralistic. Both men and women had significantly higher apprehension (factor O) compared with the uninfected controls.

lieblingautor 2y ago
It's weird that this infection makes one more risk-embracing and "likely to disregard rules," but the subjects score higher in the apprehension factor. Doesn't that mean they are somehow becoming adventurous worrywarts? (Or did I misunderstand something here).
Daub 2y ago
Does this sound that the infection is exaggerating natural sex difference?

awaythrow999 2y ago

I remember an article in the Economist between 2000-2010 claiming this was the cause of French drivers acting more reckless and aggressive in traffic compared to other countries. Not a subscriber anymore so sadly can't find the link in their archive.

etiam 2y ago

Looks like enough people are coming sufficiently fresh to this topic to benefit: Professor Robert Sapolsky at Stanford had Toxoplasma and it's manipulation behaviors as a research interest for a period. He's a successful popular science writer and I think many people appreciate his informal lecture style as entertaining. I don't remember which are the best presentations he's given on T. gondii but here's one that appears to be high-ranking on search at least https://www.edge.org/conversation/robert_sapolsky-toxo https://www.edge.org/conversation/robert_sapolsky-toxo

DoreenMichele 2y ago

...infection with the parasite Toxoplasma gondii makes wolves 46 times more likely to become a pack leader. And wolves are social creatures, so this may have substantial impact on ecosystems in ways they are just beginning to make guesses about.

deanresin 2y ago

My ex girlfriend's family used to have their cat litters right next to the kitchen table. Any bad behavior or decisions I've made since then I'm going to blame on her and my "taxoplasmosis".

setgree 2y ago
That’s gross regardless of whether it led to you being mind controlled!
chasil 2y ago
Toxoplasmosis is a debilitating disease which is suffered by those who cannot control a latent infection of toxoplasma gondii. This is likely not you. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis The behavioral changes are a different matter.
- odyssey7 2y ago
  I feel that naming one specific presentation of an infection for the pathogen isn’t so tenable now that we’ve realized there are multiple presentations. Consider, is subclinical TB not TB?
- aitchnyu 2y ago
  So Toxo makes you subscribe to too many cat subs and overwhelmingly likely to not harm you?
robertlagrant 2y ago
Taxoplasmosis is where you look at how much tax you pay vs what you get, and freak out.

samaltmanfried 2y ago

You're far more likely to become infected with T.gondii from eating rare meat than you are from having a pet cat. Infection is more highly correlated with diet than cat ownership, with populations from countries which eat more rare meats having much higher rates.

quantified 2y ago

Makes me think of The Screwfly Solution [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screwfly_Solution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screwfly_Solution]

cm2012 2y ago

There's so much BS around toxoplasmosis online. Here's corrections for two common misconceptions: 1) Almost everyone who has it got it from eating undercooked meat, not from cats. France has the highest rate of toxoplasmosis in the world because of their propensity for rare meats: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5312802/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5312802/. 2) Unless your cat lived a significant part of it's life as an outdoor cat, it is very unlikely to have the parasite (like any parasite).

cm2012 2y ago
Corrected link: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1118145/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1118145/

colechristensen 2y ago

There were quite a few studies researching the effectiveness of a blood pressure medicine called guanabenz against the latent stage of toxo with a significant decrease in brain lesions. It was discontinued and no longer manufactured for sale in the US.

nobrains 2y ago

Internet is full of cat pics. People love them. Now, in the world of cryptocurrencies, although meme coins started with dogs (doge), cat meme coins are now catching up to if not equal to dog meme coins in popularity and marketcap. Examples here: https://coinmarketcap.com/view/cat-themed/ https://coinmarketcap.com/view/cat-themed/ . Loud thought: Far fetched idea, but do you think there is a REMOTE possibility that Toxoplasma Gondii could be the cause of that? The cause of humans elevating imaginary cat tokens to god-like status by putting enormous amounts of money on them?

jshaqaw 2y ago

Some tech bros gonna stop reading at the “more likely to be alpha” part and start snaking on kitty litter.

Nasrudith 2y ago

In contrast, foxes who are infected become 'dopey' and almost domesticated. Lack of fear, increased affection, and showing some signs of obliviousness like food left hanging out of their mouths. Also sadly some other effects like it being potentially lethal. Even treated foxes still show signs of frankly, brain damage and are considered unreleasable. It is interesting that an animal close to cats (in strategy and prey), and their larger relatives are affected so differently.