Crazy cat ladies are less likely to land on their feet (when thrown from a vehicle)

Skunks falling for cats may seem a wee bit cartoonish, but there's a bizarre love triangle going on with rats in reality: Toxoplasma-Infected Rats Attracted to Cats... "When most rats sense a cat nearby, they flee in fear. When a Toxoplasma-infected rat senses a cat, he falls in love."

Cat Odors Activate Sexual Arousal Pathways in Infected Rats...
"A fascinating phenomenon in behavioral biology is the ability of parasites to manipulate host behavior for their own benefit...

Toxoplasma gondii is an obligate, single-celled protozoan parasite capable of crossing into the central nervous system of any warm-blooded vertebrate. Toxoplasma requires the cat intestine to reproduce sexually, is shed in cat feces, and must make its way from the ground to another cat host.

Toxoplasma manages this in part by infecting ground-dwelling rats who, remarkably, begin selectively preferring areas with cat urine. Infected rats retain normal defensive behavior to non-feline predator odor and normal performance on memory, anxiety, fear and social tasks. This specific preference for cat odor is likely an adaptive manipulation by Toxoplasma, increasing infected rat predation rates and facilitating Toxoplasma transmission to the cat."

Hmm, are we in a rat race, or was it a cat fight... pick your battles?

In theory, this parasitic manipulation of host behavior can affect people in one way or another: How and why Toxoplasma makes us crazy... "For a long time, a latent toxoplasmosis, the lifelong presence of dormant stages of Toxoplasma in various tissues, including the brain, was considered harmless for immunocompetent persons. Within the past 10 years, however, many independent studies have shown that this parasitic disease, with a worldwide prevalence of about 30%, could be indirectly responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths due to its effects on the rate of traffic and workplace accidents, and also suicides. Moreover, latent toxoplasmosis is probably one of the most important risk factors for schizophrenia. At least some of these effects, possibly mediated by increased dopamine and decreased tryptophan, are products of manipulation activity by Toxoplasma aiming to increase the probability of transmission from intermediate to definitive host through predation."

This kind of biological bewitchment also reminds me of the movie Fallen... "Hobbes explains that he has poisoned himself, which will leave Azazel without a host... Azazel takes possession of Hobbes' body and frantically attempts to flee, but succumbs to the poison and dies. Hobbes, in voiceover, reminds the viewer this is the story of how he almost died, revealing that he is really Azazel. A cat, who has been possessed by Azazel, emerges from underneath the cabin and begins heading back to civilization."

 

Ah, the 'catalyst'. It was a wonder to me how this tradition got started. Sounds like cats became well liked for driving pests away, and have since become more popular for warming a seat in the family car...

"A house cat is valued by humans for companionship and for its ability to hunt rodents..."

"Scientists therefore assume that African wildcats were attracted to early human settlements in the Fertile Crescent by rodents, in particular the house mouse (Mus musculus), and were tamed by Neolithic farmers. This commensal relationship between early farmers and tamed cats lasted thousands of years. As agricultural practices spread, so did tame and domesticated cats..."

"Life in proximity to humans and other domestic animals has led to a symbiotic social adaptation in cats, and cats may express great affection toward humans or other animals. Ethologically, the human keeper of a cat may function as a sort of surrogate for the cat's mother, and adult housecats live their lives in a kind of extended kittenhood, a form of behavioral neoteny. The high-pitched sounds housecats make to solicit food may mimic the cries of a hungry human infant, making them particularly difficult for humans to ignore..."

"Although cat guardianship has commonly been associated with women, a 2007 Gallup poll reported that men and women in the United States of America were equally likely to own a cat."

"Another poorly understood element of cat hunting behavior is the presentation of prey to human guardians. Ethologist Paul Leyhausen proposed that cats adopt humans into their social group and share excess kill with others in the group according to the dominance hierarchy, in which humans are reacted to as if they are at, or near, the top..."

"Cats are obligate carnivores: their physiology has evolved to efficiently process meat, and they have difficulty digesting plant matter. In contrast to omnivores such as rats, which only require about 4% protein in their diet, about 20% of a cat's diet must be protein..."

"Cats do eat grass occasionally. A proposed explanation is that cats use grass as a source of folic acid. Another is that it is used to supply dietary fiber, helping the cat defecate more easily and expel parasites and other harmful material through feces and vomit..."

"Cats can be infected or infested with viruses, bacteria, fungus, protozoans, arthropods or worms that can transmit diseases to humans. In some cases, the cat exhibits no symptoms of the disease. However, the same disease can then become evident in a human. The likelihood that a person will become diseased depends on the age and immune status of the person. Humans who have cats living in their home or in close association are more likely to become infected, however, those who do not keep cats as pets might also acquire infections from cat feces and parasites exiting the cat's body. Some of the infections of most concern include salmonella, cat-scratch disease and toxoplasmosis."

Not necessarily, but knowing about it probably helps with prevention. I was just learning about this lately while looking into foodborne illnesses and related incidents (not to harp on cats, it was more like a lot of trivia since they're so popular). Perhaps the benefit of such companionship can outweigh the risk of it being absent. I was also reading that there could be health benefits to owning a cat (ideally).

 

It's a nice story. In my trip down memory lane, I'd like to think that keeping things like the inherent risks in mind could be more influential in our behavior than environmental factors potentially would. Like how staying awake while driving is something that doesn't always happen naturally. It has to be our will, first and foremost, to influence our own behavior (along with the knowledge of what causes unexpected sleepiness, which could be an environmental factor too). So I think if someone can do that, then they can also ignore (or counteract) the latent effects of toxoplasmosis, as long as they are aware of them (you know, catch yourself before you wreck yourself). It's always something, there could be other things in the water, etc.

 

Shining a Light on Toxoplasmosis in Hawaii

"The disease is considered one of the 'Big Three' threats to monk seals in the main Hawaiian Islands, the others being trauma and interactions with certain kinds of fishing gear."

Also, there's a Public health warning as cat parasite spreads to Arctic beluga whales.

Likewise, a type of catfish is listed as one of the scariest parasites in the world (and that's what you get for peeing in a river).

Water seems to be the most common factor; it really does rain cats . . .

"In general, the highest prevalence of positive carnivores, rodents, and sheep was in the coastal region below 100 ft elevation, where the weather is cool and damp for much of the year. In the central valley the highest prevalence among sheep was in areas under irrigation. The prevalence of antibodies was lowest in the mountain areas, where climatic extremes occur."

 

I'm feeling a little more superstitious at this point. I don't know about cats having nine lives, but T. gondii could, so I wouldn't follow the five-second rule, since it only takes one oocyst to cause infection. I might even boil my drinking water (or get hot drinks more often than not), since water treatment isn't nearly as exact of a science as heat treatment. Otherwise, keeping drinks on ice could help (except things like listeria can contaminate frozen food and fluid).

 

Rhetorical question? I have suspicions... cat got that tongue.