
How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy - kawera
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/1969/12/how-your-cat-is-making-you-crazy/8873/
======
gojomo
How can they call it a parasite?

It's clearly a commensal symbiote: for cats, it assists them in catching prey.

In rats and humans, its changing prevalance helps adjust the relative
expression of different behavioral strategies, faster than inheritance alone
could.

For example, the risk-taking and increased libido in rats shifts the infected
slightly along the K-strategy/r-strategy reproductive spectrum. In some
environments that's a win, others a loss, but the T.gondii increases rat
behavior diversity, and thus the species' adaptability.

Similarly, its modulating effects on human suspicion, gregariousness,
investment in fitness-signalling (clothing), and obedience/trust sometimes
help and sometimes hurt, depending on an ever-changing environment.

What if we 'cured' this and found the resulting human populations were less
resilient against war, ecological stresses, and rapid technological/cultural
change?

(I'm only half joking. And a meta-parasite is making me write apologetics for
other parasites. And this entire comment is just a long way of saying "I, for
one, welcome our new Toxoplasmosis gondii overlords" without getting
immediately downvoted.)

~~~
liber8
Semantics point/question:

The T. gondii, as viewed from the cat's perspective might be a symbiote, but
from the rat's perspective, is certainly a parasite, isn't it? The T. gondii
is benefiting at the expense of the rat. Do biologists classify things as both
simbiotes and parasites?

~~~
gojomo
I think some rats also benefit: their adventurousness and increased sexual
activity isn't _always_ penalized with death, and even when it is, _female
rats prefer the infected male rats_. So even if they live fast and die young,
they may leave more offspring.

Whether this is a net benefit at any one time probably depends on lots of
things, and especially relative rat/predator populations. Just as human
reproductive preferences seem to change in relation to wealth, population
density, and life-expectancy.

Regarding semantics, I do think something can be both a symbiote and parasite.
When I first learned of 'symbiosis' it was in the context of mutually-
beneficial relationships, but it seems the term can be more general. Wikipedia
says scientists sometimes disagree whether 'symbiosis' should only be used to
describe 'mutualist' relationships (where both benefit) or also 'parasitic'
(one benefits and other is harmed) and 'commensal' (one benefits and other
neither harmed nor helped) relationships.

I should have used the word 'mutualist' in my above post, as that's what I was
intending to imply. But the conjecture is intentionally fuzzy about whether
the benefit is to the individual (it perhaps sometimes is) or the species (it
perhaps always is, as long as both infection and non-infection are well-
distributed).

~~~
AutoCorrect
think of it as an agent of accelerated evolution

------
kqr2
For people with cats, some reassuring text:

    
    
      Given all the nasty science swirling around this parasite, is 
      it time for cat lovers to switch their allegiance to other 
      animals?
    
      Even Flegr would advise against that. Indoor cats pose no 
      threat, he says, because they don’t carry the parasite. As 
      for outdoor cats, they shed the parasite for only three 
      weeks of their life, typically when they’re young and have 
      just begun hunting.

~~~
draggnar
hmm not so reassuring...

~~~
batista
Are you kidding me? Besides the "Indoor cats pose no threat, he says, because
they don’t carry the parasite", what other kind of reassurance you want?

Not to mention the fact that people seem to live on fine with domestic cats
for the last 2,000 years, with no casualties...

~~~
ben0x539
Of course the author says that! He has cats, he must be infected too!

But seriously, the claim wasn't that the parasite immediately kills people but
makes them more disposed towards self-destructive behavior. The fact that,
2000 years after people started living with cats, humanity yet survives isn't
really absolute proof to the contrary.

~~~
goblin89
Well, article claims that people really have started living with cats (that
is, keeping them as pets) since 18th century in France, which is also when
schizophrenia started to spread. So yeah, just over a century later and by the
looks of it humanity is lucky to still survive!

Imagine how different life would have been now without that crazy infected
folk who like dangerous driving and become obsessed with insane ideas. =)

By the way, can anyone clarify—is there a way to detect toxoplasmosis even in
latent form? It seems from Wikipedia article that blood tests can't provide
reliable results here.

------
wisty
> Compared with uninfected men, males who had the parasite were more
> introverted, suspicious, oblivious to other people’s opinions of them, and
> inclined to disregard rules. Infected women, on the other hand, presented in
> exactly the opposite way: they were more outgoing, trusting, image-
> conscious, and rule-abiding than uninfected women.

This reminds me of a lot of cat-people I know. But that might just be
selective recall.

------
nekojima
We have six cats at the house here, hence the username 'nekojima', Japanese
for 'cat island'.

I have long suspected a parasitic role (either us or them for attention rather
than brain damaging) or an element of craziness in our having so many cats. So
far our own scientific analysis has been interrupted by near constant feline
requests for attention, food or having to clean a little more than 'normal'.

~~~
white_devil
> hence the username 'nekojima', Japanese for 'cat island'.

It's actually 'shima' for island. Not sure if 'jima' works too, but shima is
definitely more common.

~~~
dschaab
(insert obligatory off-topic warning here)

> It's actually 'shima' for island. Not sure if 'jima' works too, but shima is
> definitely more common.

Correct, "island" is _shima_ , but in this case we have a phenomenon in
Japanese known as "sequential voicing" (連濁, _rendaku_ ) in which the first
syllable of the second word of a compound is changed from an unvoiced
consonant to a voiced consonant. This is particularly common when dealing with
native Japanese compounds; i.e., compounds using words not derived from the
imported Chinese pronunciations of characters. So "island" (島) by itself would
be _shima_ , but when used as a suffix, the initial consonant _sh_ becomes
voiced to _j_ , and thus _jima_. Another example is "fire" (火), pronounced
_hi_ alone, but voiced to _bi_ as the second half of words such as "fireworks"
(花火, _hanabi_ ).

------
clutchski
I loved this talk on Toxo and its effects on freewill by the always incredible
Robert Sapolsky.

[http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/sapolsky09/sapolsky09_index....](http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/sapolsky09/sapolsky09_index.html)

------
mb22
Sigh - I spent over 2 hours talking with this reporter trying to help her
understand the limitations of this guy's studies, but she doesn't seem to have
taken on board anything I said... Of course, he could be right and it could
also be that the X-rays emanating from a TV really do protect you from
malaria. Or it could be that you watch TV indoors and so don't get as many
mosquito bites. So, yes, it could be that Toxo causes increased risk-taking
... OR it could be that risk-takers drive their cars more crazily and do
things that cause them to be slightly more likely to get infected! There can
also be a strong socio-economic bias to infection rates and it could be that
people from Czech farms are more likely to be infected from eating vegetables
from their cat-feces-infested gardens and more likely to be in a car crash
driving home wasted after a Polka 10 miles away in the nearest town in a Lada
held together with superglue while their affluent city friends take the bus or
drive a BMW and eat vegetables from a mass-production farm in the Ukraine.
Etc., etc. On the other hand, the animal data are real (good, controlled
experiments) and so it is TEMPTING to believe but the human data are really
not good experiments. WAY too many "confounding variables" and no controls.
There is one study with US military recruits that found a very slight increase
in the likelihood that if you entered the army Toxo-negative and became Toxo-
positive while in the army you were ever so slightly to be discharged with a
diagnosis of schizophrenia than someone who stayed Toxo-negative. But the
difference was not statistically significant, in my opinion (predict 13
patients would be discharged with schizophrenia in the Toxo-positive group and
saw 15 were - NOT a significant difference).

Bottom line, it's crap science and of course he could be right but so could
the guy who says the world will end this November...

~~~
MSexton
I had a hard time reading this and extracting "the limitations of this guy's
studies", do you have any more details?

------
sakura_k
This dude knows nothing about cats and crazy. Cats make you crazy by pawing
your face all night for attention and sleeping all day because they're tired
from being awake until dawn.

~~~
arethuza
"Cats make you crazy by pawing your face all night for attention"

For a while one of our cats was waking me up by climbing to the top of a
wardrobe and then launching itself onto my stomach as I slept from this
considerable height - which appears to be the cat equivalent of BASE jumping.

The fact that I endured this behaviour a few times with relative good humour
probably indicates that I probably have this mind control parasite!

------
jakeonthemove
I can't believe I read through the whole thing - it started off kind of crazy.
Still, just as Flegr himself says, the change in behavior is minimal - chances
are high that the average individual's life wouldn't be much different whether
he/she had the parasite or not.

Still, it's amazing how such a primitive organism can change your brain's
function - makes you wonder if there's a parasite that's making people
stupid/smart/lazy/etc.

~~~
marshray
Perhaps even consciousness itself is... no. Host. Must. Not. Think. Such.
Thoughts.

~~~
JoachimSchipper
Dennet ("Consciousness explained") does suggest that important parts of what
we call "consciousness" are cultural, rather than inborn...

~~~
simon_weber
Blackmore in her introductions to consciousness suggests something related:
that consciousness is an a concept (or illusion, to her) only widely known
because it became a social meme.

------
jlees
Here's a thought. Helen Fisher's research categorises people into four
dominant personality types based on levels of neurochemicals:
[http://socionist.blogspot.com/2009/04/helen-fishers-types-
ex...](http://socionist.blogspot.com/2009/04/helen-fishers-types-explorer-
builder.html)

For dopamine, which according to the cat article is elevated in Toxo-infected
humans, the associated personality type is "risk-taking, curious, creative,
impulsive, optimistic and energetic". Plus the associated decrease in fear
response in rats: who does that sound like?

i.e. I wonder what percentage of entrepreneurs are Toxo infected?

~~~
rflrob
Here's the question, though: are the risk-taking humans risk-taking because
they're infected, or are they infected because they're risk taking.
Correlation, unfortunately, doesn't imply causation.

The "fatal attraction to cat urine" studies are somewhat imperfect [1]. I'm
friends with a student who's doing similar studies with mice but with better
spatial discrimination . The consensus seems to be that while the fear
response goes down, the idea that it's attractive to the rodents is more
difficult to replicate.

[1] Free at
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1690701/?tool=pu...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1690701/?tool=pubmed)

------
mazsa
"We evaluated 148 case patients with recent T. gondii infection and 413
control patients. In multivariate analysis, an elevated risk of recent T.
gondii infection was associated with the following factors: eating raw ground
beef (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 6.67; 95% confidence limits [CLs], 2.09,
21.24; attributable risk [AR], 7%); eating rare lamb (aOR, 8.39; 95% CLs,
3.68, 19.16; AR, 20%); eating locally produced cured, dried, or smoked meat
(aOR, 1.97; 95% CLs, 1.18, 3.28; AR, 22%); working with meat (aOR, 3.15; 95%
CLs, 1.09, 9.10; AR, 5%); drinking unpasteurized goat’s milk (aOR, 5.09; 95%
CLs, 1.45, 17.80; AR, 4%); and having 3 or more kittens (aOR, 27.89; 95% CLs,
5.72, 135.86; AR, 10%). Eating raw oysters, clams, or mussels (aOR, 2.22; 95%
CLs, 1.07, 4.61; AR, 16%) was significant in a separate model among persons
asked this question. Subgroup results are also provided for women and for
pregnant women.

Conclusions. In the United States, exposure to certain raw or undercooked
foods and exposure to kittens are risk factors for T. gondii infection.
Knowledge of these risk factors will help to target prevention efforts."
<http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/49/6/878.full>

------
micheljansen
After reading this article (which was very enjoyable by the way), I am now
curious to find out if I myself may be the puppet of some parasite. Is there
any way to find this out easily?

------
spacemanaki
Radiolab delved into this a bit in their show "Parasites" from a while back.
You can listen to the relevant segment under "The Scratch", although I
recommend the whole thing, of course:

<http://www.radiolab.org/2009/sep/07/>

------
nodemaker
When and if this research is sufficiently established, people will most likely
have an averse (and perhaps unwarrantedly so) attitude to having cats as pets.

Or maybe we will start vaccinating the kitties when they are young enough to
start hunting.

~~~
maxerickson
I guess it depends on how easy and effective treatments are.

Pregnant women already routinely get advice not to clean litter boxes and
such, which, anecdotally, sometimes translates into getting rid of the cat.

------
ryan-allen
There's more information on this parasite on Wikipedia:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis>

Other links on the 'net that I've found are reporting (without any citations)
that the parasite can be detected with a blood test (according to wikipedia,
not true) and that it cannot be treated (again, according to wikipedia, also
not true).

I've seen articles about this parasite pop up over at least the last 5 years.
If it was a truly serious problem I'm sure there'd be more information about
it. It smells a bit like FUD though.

Can anyone else elaborate on this further?

~~~
Alex3917
"If it was a truly serious problem I'm sure there'd be more information about
it."

That's not really how science/epistemology work.

------
genbattle
This is a repost of an earlier submission at
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3573447>

(It was probably posted previously before that)

------
evoltix
The article is very interesting but seems to inflate the fact that if you have
a cat you're most likely going to contract T. gondii.

If indoor cats don't carry T. gondii and outdoor cats only carry the parasite
for three weeks of their life, isn't the risk of getting this parasite very
low since there is only a three week window? Perhaps I'm misinterpreting this.
Please correct me if I'm wrong.

------
nivertech
I think T.gondi is the reason kitten videos are so popular on YouTube - CDC
should look into this - it might be a global pandemic ;)

I want to do an experiment: A/B testing landing page with and without cute
kitten photos. I'm sure the one with cats photos will have much higher
conversion rate.

~~~
droctopu5
I also believe baby humans pass on a parasite that influences the parent to
take and share voluminous photos and to regard every ounce of vomit from the
child as a work of genius. This merits further study.

Hold on, my cat is trying to type sometjfkd a;dsjkf jdfmfddddddsa

fidddddddddddddddx fj

------
danso
I love that the scientist at the heart of this story looks like a young Doc
Brown

------
marshray
Finally! A scientific explanation for
<http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=sP4NMoJcFd4> !

------
winter_blue
I'm glad he was smart/sane enough to even think about going to the lab. When
something is messing with your mind, can you even think of such logical
reasonable things?

~~~
marshray
You've never heard of a mad scientist? You know "Mwahaahahaaa..." and all
that.

I'm surprised, it's a total cultural meme.

Probably dates back to Newton and those other alchemists who were really
fascinated by the, um, transformative properties of mercury.

~~~
ahoyhere
Seriously, OC probably means this: When you're having seemingly psychological
affects/things that are just "part of who you are," it's almost impossible to
begin to think that it might be some outside force.

I used to take a medicine which I thought was fine; in the mean time, I
developed worse and worse depression, anxiety, and all the time I thought it
was a reasonable reaction to stuff in my life. THEN I got paranoid and thought
my best friend and boyfriend were out to get me. Finally, something snapped.
Finally, I thought, "whoa, this is not me." Turns out it was ALL the medicine.
Yes, I had reasons to be depressed, but that's just not my type. Ended the
medicine, ended all the side effects.

It only took 3 years and a CRAZY extent of the side effects for me to realize
it "wasn't me."

------
Mitt
Note how this linked article is from March 2012. And today is only February
10th :-)

~~~
parfe
Print magazines date their online articles to match the print issue.

------
giardini
So what's the treatment for toxoplasmosis infection? Can I buy something OTC?

~~~
Firebrand
No OTCs, but Minocycline looks promising, and it's cheap.

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/1885421>

Also, Maralone or something similar that uses atovaquone and proguanil.

------
Mordor
Really hoping alcohol is the cure...

------
rsanchez1
Looks like there is something to the "crazy cat lady" after all.

~~~
commieneko
Except the supposed behavior alteration in women is increased social activity,
attention to appearance, neatness, and aversion to the smell of cat urine.

~~~
gojomo
_Average_ alteration.

Given the article's suggestion that some people react differently to infection
(as in the schizophrenia/immune-system discussion, and not just by gender),
plus the similarity of cat ladies' behavior with infected rats in some
dimensions, a link between this parasite and the 'cat lady' archetype is not
an outlandish conjecture.

------
zeroboy
I have four cats and they are all indoors, so I guess I'm safe. But even if
they weren't indoors, and I was vulnerable to this parasite, it wouldn't
matter. I love them too much. The heart overrules the head in this matter.

~~~
ars
> The heart overrules the head in this matter.

I guess the parasite is working.

------
maeon3
Ive dated 2 girls with cats, both of them turned out to be very crazy. Cats
are a deal breaker for me. Crazy cat lady isn't the exception, its the rule.
The ladies will argue about this to no end, don't waste your time, they are
crazy. I wish I could send this note back to myself 18 years ago.

~~~
adriand
I was tempted to mock your comment, but instead, out of a general wish for you
to be happy even though I don't know you, I would really recommend that you
expand the size of your study group.

I'm sure if you think about it you can find some other similarities between
these two women that may account for their issues. For example, both of them
were apparently attracted to you...

~~~
maeon3
Excellent point! I have to try harder to not fall victim to the fallacy of
post hoc.

------
peteretep
> JAROSLAV FLEGR IS NO KOOK

FUNNY HE SURE LOOKS LIKE ONE

------
kruhft
My cat is so self reliant I love any attention he gives me.

But then again, I raised him.

But, WTF, cat stories on Hacker News? I don't know what to say!

~~~
GuiA
Maybe you should read the linked article before commenting on it- it goes well
beyond just cats ;)

