English
I have previously heard about the parasite “Toxoplasma”, but today I encountered the story about toxoplasma in the book that I am currently reading again. Toxoplasma can live in all warm-blooded animals, but can sexually reproduce only in the cat's intestines. As rats often frequent the same hangouts as cats, toxoplasma often lives in rats but in order to get to feline organisms, it uses a creepy mechanism. Toxoplasma manipulates neurologically the rat's brain and makes it to forsake their fear of cats and even run to their enemy. Toxoplasma makes a lot of cysts in the rat's brain, causing dopamine levels to rise. Under such conditions, rat's desires and fears change and make it to be drawn to a cat.
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This is so interesting! I had heard something similar, but with ants. There's a fungus that also manipulates ants to climb up leaves and stay there quiet during the evening, as if they were "zombies", just for another animal to eat them so the cycle continues. If no animal eats them, they return to the anthill to survive and try again the next evening. It's similar to Toxoplasma in rats, only that it happens with insects and sheep.
This scares me. How can we be sure that we're not being manipulated by a parasite? hahahaha 😳
Thank you for your interesting comment! :) I have heard about ants, but some aspects were new to me. Yes, it scares me too, but I also find it fascinating. It shows, how everything is interconected in our world.