10 ms·

> Parasitism is far from easy living; hundreds of millions of years of evolution have prodded parasites to find and manipulate other animals, just as those anim

by lqet 2y ago

> Parasitism is far from easy living; hundreds of millions of years of evolution have prodded parasites to find and manipulate other animals, just as those animals have evolved their own unique methods of survival. Parasites manipulating their hosts is something that really fascinates me from an evolutionary point of view. An example given in the article is T. gondii [0]: > [...] a parasitic protozoan that boasts “Mind Control,” because it attracts its rodent host to the smell of cat urine, where the rat spreads the parasite to felines. Infected mice also have a reduced fear from predators, likely for the same reason. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii

shagie 2y ago
> Infected mice also have a reduced fear from predators, likely for the same reason. In primates, there's some non-fear of cats too. For humans and domestic felines, this isn't much of an issue. For chimpanzees who share territory with leopards, this is more of an issue. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/16/science/a-parasite-leopards-and-a-primates-fear-and-survival.html?unlocked_article_code=1._k0.9KAd.dP_wjNFuXols&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/16/science/a-parasite-leopar... (and the paper - Morbid attraction to leopard urine in Toxoplasma-infected chimpanzees https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982215015171 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098221... )
- SideburnsOfDoom 2y ago
  Ancestral humans shared territory with leopards, and children were vulnerable (1). Big cats are still dangerous. Having a leopard stare at you, even through a fence, does raise the heart rate. But I don't know why we regard big cats so relatively favourably, when an evolved innate repulsion, such as to spiders or snakes, would make as much sense. 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopard_attack#Leopard_predation_on_hominids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopard_attack#Leopard_predati...
  - CuriouslyC 2y ago
    Cats are just aesthetically well put together animals. We probably also like the smaller ones due to 5000 years of them predating upon vermin that like to hang around our encampments.
    - thinkingemote 2y ago
      5000 years isn't that long in evolutionary biology timescales. But culturally we do kinda like the usefulness of the smaller cats. I would say that the cute cats are domesticated species, like many animals. So they wouldn't exist without humans, and it's in their benefit to behave to survive.
      - CuriouslyC 2y ago
        Interestingly enough, the genomes of wild forest cats and domestic cats have diverged FAR less than other domesticated animals such as dogs/sheep/etc. We domesticated other animals, but up until the 18th century or so I'd say it's more accurate to describe what we've done with cats as "co-evolution"
        shagie 2y ago
        Cats are more "companion" rather than "domesticated" and (until recently) cats weren't bred for specific traits (and those now tend to be aesthetic choices rather than "practical" choices). Compare this with dogs that are more of a "working animal." We've bread dogs to fill specific roles because they were larger to work with. If humanity had tried to find companionship in the mountain lion instead of Felis lybica (the wild cat). Also for the how almost-domestic the African wild cats are: https://youtu.be/ZRqlSr1Yp1M https://youtu.be/ZRqlSr1Yp1M The other part of it (as I understand it) is that cats body form is not as easily selected for when compared to animals that humans have domesticated. Dogs have a number of body sizes that can be "easily" selected for - https://embarkvet.com/products/dog-traits/traits-list/#body-size https://embarkvet.com/products/dog-traits/traits-list/#body-... and https://embarkvet.com/products/dog-traits/traits-list/#other-body-features https://embarkvet.com/products/dog-traits/traits-list/#other... (there's even a mutation of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPAS1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPAS1 in wolves that was selectively bred into dogs https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/34/3/734/2843179 https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/34/3/734/2843179 ) I suspect part of the lack of range comes also from that the cats of size that don't eat us are not ones that can be crossbred with cats in the wild to introduce new useful genes. Trying to cross a domestic cat a wild cat doesn't produce a new cat that is useful in a new role ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felid_hybrids#Confirmed_domestic_cat_×_felid_hybrids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felid_hybrids#Confirmed_domest... ). Compare this with domestic dogs and the various wild dog species.
- trte9343r4 2y ago
  Some people lost fear from other predators: aggressive dogs. They even force family members to live in dangerous situation, where they get attacked and injured regularly. Mental illness or brain parasite is the only possible explanation for dog owners behavior.
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    This is definitely true, at least in the US, and it's quite different from historical norms too. Ages ago, aggressive dogs were put down quickly (or used as guard dogs, with appropriate restraints). People also didn't normally keep large dogs inside, sleep in beds with them, etc. But now it's common for some odd reason for people to want to keep aggressive dogs around their young children, and then act shocked when something terrible happens.
    - bartvk 2y ago
      Even when a dog is not aggressive, unexplainable things can happen. Last year, there was news in The Netherlands about a case where grandparents were babysitting. Their normally docile German shepherd killed the baby within seconds. https://www-nhnieuws-nl.translate.goog/nieuws/329594/opa-en-oma-van-door-hond-doodgebeten-kind-in-diemen-krijgen-geen-straf?_x_tr_sl=nl&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp&_x_tr_hist=true https://www-nhnieuws-nl.translate.goog/nieuws/329594/opa-en-...
      - shiroiushi 2y ago
        Wow, some serious stupidity in this case: >The dog had bitten another dog two years earlier and a cat seven years before the incident with the baby, but an expert stated that aggressive behavior towards animals is no reason to assume that it is also aimed at people. Really? These "experts" are morons. German Shepherds are well-known for their use as police and military dogs because of their size, strength, and aggressiveness. Sure, they can be trained better than some other known-to-be-vicious dogs, but they're still dangerous. Putting one in a room with an infant is pure stupidity. Even worse, this particular dog had already attacked other animals in the past. At the very best, you might be able to claim that a dog that bit a cat years ago isn't necessarily unsafe around full-grown adult humans, but a German Shepherd chomping on a person isn't an immediate death sentence, but with an infant it really is. This article also sucks because it doesn't even tell us what ultimately happened to the dog.
- workincircles 2y ago
  A fascinating video of a leopard attacking baboons[1]. The big cat achieves a scratch on one baboon and then runs away from the troop. Enough to infect and then later pick off an errant victim? To my eye, the baboons are sad at the expectation that they will soon lose a friend. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5wnKEXs6YM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5wnKEXs6YM
  - lycopodiopsida 2y ago
    > The big cat achieves a scratch on one baboon and then runs away from the troop. It is most likely running away because it found itself completely overwhelmed by multiple attackers - it is not a hunting style big cats go for.
- fuzztester 2y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopard_attack https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopard_attack "Attacks in India are still relatively common, and in some regions of the country leopards kill more humans than all other large carnivores combined.[9][10] "
calepayson 2y ago
Check out “The Extended Phenotype” (if you haven’t already). I think you’ll love it!
mc_maurer 2y ago
I did my PhD studying manipulative parasites and in general, impacts of parasites/parasitoids on host behavior. This is my absolute favorite example: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0002276 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... A parasitoid lays multiple eggs in a caterpillar host. The larvae eventually hatch out of the host's body, but do NOT kill it. They then need to pupate outside the host, which leaves them vulnerable to predation. Their former host, the caterpillar whose body they just violently erupted from, will then act as a BODYGUARD. It will body slam any insects that approach, knocking them away from the pupae. Truly the stuff of science fiction.
- mc_maurer 2y ago
  Another one of my favorite papers of all time: https://www.jstor.org/stable/29779588 https://www.jstor.org/stable/29779588 There's a nematomorph parasite that infects crickets, and part of its life cycle is aquatic. It will induce crickets to jump into water and drown themselves (there are some crazy videos of this on YouTube). This study found that the allochthonous input (land to water) coming from the crickets jumping into a Japenese stream was a large part of an endangered trout species' diet. In short, his trout was kept alive because of a parasite driving crickets to drown themselves.
  - thaumasiotes 2y ago
    > This study found that the allochthonous input (land to water) coming from the crickets jumping into a Japenese stream was a large part of an endangered trout species' diet. In short, his trout was kept alive because of a parasite driving crickets to drown themselves. The summary doesn't seem to follow from the finding. The fact that you mostly just eat crickets that walk up and ask to be eaten doesn't immediately imply that, if the crickets stopped doing that, you'd starve to death. It should be easy to understand the choice to go with a low-effort option even if there's also a higher-effort option available.
    - mc_maurer 2y ago
      There's an inherent cost to foraging, so a high-quality food item that requires little effort is a much greater net energy benefit. When we're talking about an endangered species whose margins are quite slim to begin with, this can be a big difference maker. A couple dead trout reduces the population size, increases inbreeding depression, things aren't looking so good. I certainly oversimplified the mechanisms here, but a change in 60% of an organism's diet is not easily dismissed.
thrownblown 2y ago
Toxo comes into the picture by way of an old wives' tale forbidding mothers from having cats around during pregnancy. Basically the only spot that toxo can reproduce itself is within a cat's stomach. The toxo then goes out with the feces (which is where the caution comes from) and rodents eat the feces. Toxo's mission is to get that rodent back into the stomach of a cat. Rodents themselves are genetically wired to fear cats. A rat that smells cat urine will go the other way. However, get that same rodent infected with toxo and it will suddenly be attracted to the scent. Thus it checks out cat urine and becomes more likely to find itself in the stomach of a cat. So you'd think toxo is wreaking havoc with all sorts of elements within the rat, turning it into a deranged rat. Nope. Everything else remains and functions normally - olfaction, social behavior, learning and memory, and even fear behaviors all stay the same. It takes about 6 weeks for toxo to migrate from the gut to the brain. In the brain it forms cysts in multiple locations, but mainly in the amygdala region. The amygdala is the brain's center for fear and anxiety. It is also the brain center for forming predator aversion pathways. Once in the amygdala toxo is able to take dendritic nerve cell endings and cause them to shrivel up. Shrivel up the dendritic spine, shrivel up the fear pathway. Taking the creepiness up several notches, recall that other fear/anxiety based behaviors remain constant. The parasite is actually locating and unwiring the very pathway it needs to destroy. Amazingly, it does not stop there. Toxo wants to make cat urine attractive and it is able to do so by hijacking another well known pathway; sexual attraction. Part of the neural connection for sexual activity passes through the amygdala. This gets rewired and a rodent infected with toxo will no longer have a fear response to the urine but it will have activation of this sexual response pathway, resulting in attraction to the scent. Eau de merde. C'est fantastique! They are mapping out the toxo genome. One curious element discovered is that this protozoan parasite has two genes for tyrosine hydroxylase. This is responsible in part for the production of dopamine, which is all about rewards and the anticipation of rewards (really it's the thing that gets you to do the thing needed for the reward). It acts as a catalyst in the conversion of L-tyrosine into L-DOPA, which is in turn a precursor for dopamine. So at the right moment, the parasite secretes the enzyme, thus driving the neurons to create dopamine at the time the toxo wants them to, thus associating dopamine with the neural pathway that toxo wants used! Do other parasites that are closely related to toxo share this gene? No. Strangely it does not have genes for other common hormones - just this one that allows it to plug into the key for mammalian reward systems. And it starts generating it after it has penetrated into the brain and formed cysts, especially cysts in the amygdala. For humans the current clinical dogma is that it's a disaster for a fetus but otherwise runs its course and goes latent. However, a small literature exists suggesting that males in particular become more impulsive after a toxo infection and that people who are toxo infected are 3-4 times more likely to be killed in car accidents that involve reckless speeding. He quips that this is a protozoan parasite that knows more about the neurobiology of fear and motivation than 25,000 neuroscientists standing on each others' shoulders. And it's not alone. The rabies virus knows how to control the neurobiology of aggression. It makes the animal more likely to bite and pass on the rabies infection. from: http://www.robertsapolskyrocks.com/toxoplasmosis.html http://www.robertsapolskyrocks.com/toxoplasmosis.html https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29906469/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29906469/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC117239/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC117239/ https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0383/13/2/593 https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0383/13/2/593 Martin Shkreli is still getting raked of the coals over his deraprim pricing shenanigans https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/01/ftc-asks-federal-court-hold-pharma-bro-martin-shkreli-contempt https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/01/...
scns 2y ago
One crazy thing about Toxoplasmosis: Humans infected get less inhibited. More often busted for breaking the speed limit. More often founding a company.

by lqet 2y ago

shagie 2y ago

> Infected mice also have a reduced fear from predators, likely for the same reason. In primates, there's some non-fear of cats too. For humans and domestic felines, this isn't much of an issue. For chimpanzees who share territory with leopards, this is more of an issue. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/16/science/a-parasite-leopards-and-a-primates-fear-and-survival.html?unlocked_article_code=1._k0.9KAd.dP_wjNFuXols&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/16/science/a-parasite-leopar... (and the paper - Morbid attraction to leopard urine in Toxoplasma-infected chimpanzees https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982215015171 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098221... )

SideburnsOfDoom 2y ago
Ancestral humans shared territory with leopards, and children were vulnerable (1). Big cats are still dangerous. Having a leopard stare at you, even through a fence, does raise the heart rate. But I don't know why we regard big cats so relatively favourably, when an evolved innate repulsion, such as to spiders or snakes, would make as much sense. 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopard_attack#Leopard_predation_on_hominids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopard_attack#Leopard_predati...
- CuriouslyC 2y ago
  Cats are just aesthetically well put together animals. We probably also like the smaller ones due to 5000 years of them predating upon vermin that like to hang around our encampments.
  - thinkingemote 2y ago
    5000 years isn't that long in evolutionary biology timescales. But culturally we do kinda like the usefulness of the smaller cats. I would say that the cute cats are domesticated species, like many animals. So they wouldn't exist without humans, and it's in their benefit to behave to survive.
    - CuriouslyC 2y ago
      Interestingly enough, the genomes of wild forest cats and domestic cats have diverged FAR less than other domesticated animals such as dogs/sheep/etc. We domesticated other animals, but up until the 18th century or so I'd say it's more accurate to describe what we've done with cats as "co-evolution"
      - shagie 2y ago
        Cats are more "companion" rather than "domesticated" and (until recently) cats weren't bred for specific traits (and those now tend to be aesthetic choices rather than "practical" choices). Compare this with dogs that are more of a "working animal." We've bread dogs to fill specific roles because they were larger to work with. If humanity had tried to find companionship in the mountain lion instead of Felis lybica (the wild cat). Also for the how almost-domestic the African wild cats are: https://youtu.be/ZRqlSr1Yp1M https://youtu.be/ZRqlSr1Yp1M The other part of it (as I understand it) is that cats body form is not as easily selected for when compared to animals that humans have domesticated. Dogs have a number of body sizes that can be "easily" selected for - https://embarkvet.com/products/dog-traits/traits-list/#body-size https://embarkvet.com/products/dog-traits/traits-list/#body-... and https://embarkvet.com/products/dog-traits/traits-list/#other-body-features https://embarkvet.com/products/dog-traits/traits-list/#other... (there's even a mutation of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPAS1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPAS1 in wolves that was selectively bred into dogs https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/34/3/734/2843179 https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/34/3/734/2843179 ) I suspect part of the lack of range comes also from that the cats of size that don't eat us are not ones that can be crossbred with cats in the wild to introduce new useful genes. Trying to cross a domestic cat a wild cat doesn't produce a new cat that is useful in a new role ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felid_hybrids#Confirmed_domestic_cat_×_felid_hybrids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felid_hybrids#Confirmed_domest... ). Compare this with domestic dogs and the various wild dog species.
trte9343r4 2y ago
Some people lost fear from other predators: aggressive dogs. They even force family members to live in dangerous situation, where they get attacked and injured regularly. Mental illness or brain parasite is the only possible explanation for dog owners behavior.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  This is definitely true, at least in the US, and it's quite different from historical norms too. Ages ago, aggressive dogs were put down quickly (or used as guard dogs, with appropriate restraints). People also didn't normally keep large dogs inside, sleep in beds with them, etc. But now it's common for some odd reason for people to want to keep aggressive dogs around their young children, and then act shocked when something terrible happens.
  - bartvk 2y ago
    Even when a dog is not aggressive, unexplainable things can happen. Last year, there was news in The Netherlands about a case where grandparents were babysitting. Their normally docile German shepherd killed the baby within seconds. https://www-nhnieuws-nl.translate.goog/nieuws/329594/opa-en-oma-van-door-hond-doodgebeten-kind-in-diemen-krijgen-geen-straf?_x_tr_sl=nl&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp&_x_tr_hist=true https://www-nhnieuws-nl.translate.goog/nieuws/329594/opa-en-...
    - shiroiushi 2y ago
      Wow, some serious stupidity in this case: >The dog had bitten another dog two years earlier and a cat seven years before the incident with the baby, but an expert stated that aggressive behavior towards animals is no reason to assume that it is also aimed at people. Really? These "experts" are morons. German Shepherds are well-known for their use as police and military dogs because of their size, strength, and aggressiveness. Sure, they can be trained better than some other known-to-be-vicious dogs, but they're still dangerous. Putting one in a room with an infant is pure stupidity. Even worse, this particular dog had already attacked other animals in the past. At the very best, you might be able to claim that a dog that bit a cat years ago isn't necessarily unsafe around full-grown adult humans, but a German Shepherd chomping on a person isn't an immediate death sentence, but with an infant it really is. This article also sucks because it doesn't even tell us what ultimately happened to the dog.
workincircles 2y ago
A fascinating video of a leopard attacking baboons[1]. The big cat achieves a scratch on one baboon and then runs away from the troop. Enough to infect and then later pick off an errant victim? To my eye, the baboons are sad at the expectation that they will soon lose a friend. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5wnKEXs6YM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5wnKEXs6YM
- lycopodiopsida 2y ago
  > The big cat achieves a scratch on one baboon and then runs away from the troop. It is most likely running away because it found itself completely overwhelmed by multiple attackers - it is not a hunting style big cats go for.
fuzztester 2y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopard_attack https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopard_attack "Attacks in India are still relatively common, and in some regions of the country leopards kill more humans than all other large carnivores combined.[9][10] "

calepayson 2y ago

Check out “The Extended Phenotype” (if you haven’t already). I think you’ll love it!

mc_maurer 2y ago

I did my PhD studying manipulative parasites and in general, impacts of parasites/parasitoids on host behavior. This is my absolute favorite example: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0002276 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... A parasitoid lays multiple eggs in a caterpillar host. The larvae eventually hatch out of the host's body, but do NOT kill it. They then need to pupate outside the host, which leaves them vulnerable to predation. Their former host, the caterpillar whose body they just violently erupted from, will then act as a BODYGUARD. It will body slam any insects that approach, knocking them away from the pupae. Truly the stuff of science fiction.

mc_maurer 2y ago
Another one of my favorite papers of all time: https://www.jstor.org/stable/29779588 https://www.jstor.org/stable/29779588 There's a nematomorph parasite that infects crickets, and part of its life cycle is aquatic. It will induce crickets to jump into water and drown themselves (there are some crazy videos of this on YouTube). This study found that the allochthonous input (land to water) coming from the crickets jumping into a Japenese stream was a large part of an endangered trout species' diet. In short, his trout was kept alive because of a parasite driving crickets to drown themselves.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  > This study found that the allochthonous input (land to water) coming from the crickets jumping into a Japenese stream was a large part of an endangered trout species' diet. In short, his trout was kept alive because of a parasite driving crickets to drown themselves. The summary doesn't seem to follow from the finding. The fact that you mostly just eat crickets that walk up and ask to be eaten doesn't immediately imply that, if the crickets stopped doing that, you'd starve to death. It should be easy to understand the choice to go with a low-effort option even if there's also a higher-effort option available.
  - mc_maurer 2y ago
    There's an inherent cost to foraging, so a high-quality food item that requires little effort is a much greater net energy benefit. When we're talking about an endangered species whose margins are quite slim to begin with, this can be a big difference maker. A couple dead trout reduces the population size, increases inbreeding depression, things aren't looking so good. I certainly oversimplified the mechanisms here, but a change in 60% of an organism's diet is not easily dismissed.

thrownblown 2y ago

Toxo comes into the picture by way of an old wives' tale forbidding mothers from having cats around during pregnancy. Basically the only spot that toxo can reproduce itself is within a cat's stomach. The toxo then goes out with the feces (which is where the caution comes from) and rodents eat the feces. Toxo's mission is to get that rodent back into the stomach of a cat. Rodents themselves are genetically wired to fear cats. A rat that smells cat urine will go the other way. However, get that same rodent infected with toxo and it will suddenly be attracted to the scent. Thus it checks out cat urine and becomes more likely to find itself in the stomach of a cat. So you'd think toxo is wreaking havoc with all sorts of elements within the rat, turning it into a deranged rat. Nope. Everything else remains and functions normally - olfaction, social behavior, learning and memory, and even fear behaviors all stay the same. It takes about 6 weeks for toxo to migrate from the gut to the brain. In the brain it forms cysts in multiple locations, but mainly in the amygdala region. The amygdala is the brain's center for fear and anxiety. It is also the brain center for forming predator aversion pathways. Once in the amygdala toxo is able to take dendritic nerve cell endings and cause them to shrivel up. Shrivel up the dendritic spine, shrivel up the fear pathway. Taking the creepiness up several notches, recall that other fear/anxiety based behaviors remain constant. The parasite is actually locating and unwiring the very pathway it needs to destroy. Amazingly, it does not stop there. Toxo wants to make cat urine attractive and it is able to do so by hijacking another well known pathway; sexual attraction. Part of the neural connection for sexual activity passes through the amygdala. This gets rewired and a rodent infected with toxo will no longer have a fear response to the urine but it will have activation of this sexual response pathway, resulting in attraction to the scent. Eau de merde. C'est fantastique! They are mapping out the toxo genome. One curious element discovered is that this protozoan parasite has two genes for tyrosine hydroxylase. This is responsible in part for the production of dopamine, which is all about rewards and the anticipation of rewards (really it's the thing that gets you to do the thing needed for the reward). It acts as a catalyst in the conversion of L-tyrosine into L-DOPA, which is in turn a precursor for dopamine. So at the right moment, the parasite secretes the enzyme, thus driving the neurons to create dopamine at the time the toxo wants them to, thus associating dopamine with the neural pathway that toxo wants used! Do other parasites that are closely related to toxo share this gene? No. Strangely it does not have genes for other common hormones - just this one that allows it to plug into the key for mammalian reward systems. And it starts generating it after it has penetrated into the brain and formed cysts, especially cysts in the amygdala. For humans the current clinical dogma is that it's a disaster for a fetus but otherwise runs its course and goes latent. However, a small literature exists suggesting that males in particular become more impulsive after a toxo infection and that people who are toxo infected are 3-4 times more likely to be killed in car accidents that involve reckless speeding. He quips that this is a protozoan parasite that knows more about the neurobiology of fear and motivation than 25,000 neuroscientists standing on each others' shoulders. And it's not alone. The rabies virus knows how to control the neurobiology of aggression. It makes the animal more likely to bite and pass on the rabies infection. from: http://www.robertsapolskyrocks.com/toxoplasmosis.html http://www.robertsapolskyrocks.com/toxoplasmosis.html https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29906469/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29906469/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC117239/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC117239/ https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0383/13/2/593 https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0383/13/2/593 Martin Shkreli is still getting raked of the coals over his deraprim pricing shenanigans https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/01/ftc-asks-federal-court-hold-pharma-bro-martin-shkreli-contempt https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/01/...

scns 2y ago

One crazy thing about Toxoplasmosis: Humans infected get less inhibited. More often busted for breaking the speed limit. More often founding a company.