FLICKR, PEARLZENITHTwo decades ago, researchers discovered that Toxoplasma gondii infection causes rodents to lose their innate fear of cats, the animal hosts in which the parasite completes its life cycle. Now, research published today (September 18) in PLOS ONE suggests that such loss of fear is a permanent behavioral change, observed even in rodents where the parasite is no longer found.
T. gondii is a common protozoan that reproduces in the guts of felines and has captured public imagination in recent years for studies associating it with everything from schizophrenia to suicide to traffic accidents. But long before researchers began investigating T. gondii’s effects on humans, they studied its impacts on other mammals, particularly rodents. One of the things they found was that chronic infection of T. gondii caused rats to no longer fear the smell of cat urine, a phenomenon dubbed “fatal feline attraction” by Joanne Webster, who was part of the Oxford University team that discovered it in 1990s.
“Other than the hyperaggression that follows rabies, this is the only really specific behavior change that has been observed in mammals” as a result of ...
