Comments on Today in Cats

Adding to the fun about toxo:

There is some evidence that toxo-infected humans -- we're play the rat's role in the parasite lifecycle --also have changes in personality. Men become more aggressive and women more promiscuous.

For more kitty fun go here... http://www.icanhascheezburger.com/

Where is the evidence Golob? I don't doubt it, but my cousin does brain research sometimes involving Feline domesticus Unfortunately her snobbishness prevents me learning much from her.

There are a handful of peer-reviewed papers on the subject.

Here is an excerpt from an article on the subject:

"Consistent and significant differences in Cattell's personality factors were found between Toxoplasma-infected and -uninfected subjects in 9 of 11 studies, and these differences were not the same for men and women. After using the Bonferroni correction for multiple tests, the personality of infected men showed lower superego strength (rule consciousness) and higher vigilance (factors G and L on Cattell's 16PF). Thus, 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."

and

"...the observed low level of novelty seeking in humans infected with Toxoplasma or cytomegalovirus is supposedly associated with high dopamine levels in the ventral midbrain...

The dopamine imbalance between the mesolimbic and mesocortical regions in the brain is suspected to play a role in the development of schizophrenia which could explain the observed association between schizophrenia and toxoplasmosis ...

It is also possible that differences in the level of testosterone may be responsible for the observed behavioral differences between Toxoplasma-infected and Toxoplasma-free subjects."

THE MOSCOW CAT CIRCUS IS AMAZING! If you search for it in Nexis you can probably find the NYT article from last year about it. I will totally be going.

Cool, thanks golob. I appreciate it; nice having a hard copy, so to speak. My cousin just gets so coy at times since she knows the lingo pretty well. It's hard to believe some of the bizarre 'facts' she professes.

My pleasure daniel...

and Monkey, I love the link!

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