Dating Tricks- Gift your girlfriend a cat (but keep away from it)

Taxoplasma Gondii is a cat parasite that has infected about half of us, and it makes us do things we won't be doing otherwise. I was shocked when I read this piece in the ABC :

It reports that Kevin Lafferty  has put forth a provocative theory that says the cat virus can change human cultures on a massive scale. When infected with it through association with cats, women change and get to be warm, outgoing and attentive to others, while infected men tend to be less intelligent and probably a bit boring. But both men and women who are infected are more prone to feeling guilty and insecure.  

That is not something to worry,  may be if you are a man, you have to do something about this, because when I googled some more, I found this demoralising story at The Esquire  which says that Toxoplasma gondii gives the female libido a noticeable boost. T. gondii has the opposite effect on men, decreasing their IQs and making them more jealous,  more morose and less attractive to women.

(I learnt there that 85 percent of people in France are infected- may be which is why Madame Bovary did what she did.  Esquire says this could be the reason French women are so sensual and may be this is why the French are terrible drivers (Infected persons are 2.6 percent more likely to get in a traffic accident.).)

In addition to all this, Toxoplasma gondi could be the cause of schizophrenia in adults and  hyperactivity and lower IQs in children.

T Gondii is really a sinister monster- It changes the personality of a rat so much that it gets killed more easily-  a rat which eats the cat feces infected with the parasite eggs is itself  infected. And then the rat becomes more adventurous and foolhardy- cats find it easy to find them. Cat eats the rat, and the parasite completes its life cycle.

There are other instances of parasites influencing host behaviour- Natural News 

• Rabies virus increases salivation, and makes its hosts aggressive and more likely to bite- it spreads through saliva.
• The malaria parasite plasmodium initially makes the infected mosquito cautious and less likely to bite- so that it has time to breed; and later, it makes the mosquito bite more and hard- so that it has a chance to get more hosts.
• Trematodes that infect brackish water crustaceans change the way they escape so that it gets eaten- they are eaten by birds, and the parasite spreads to other hosts through the bird's droppings.
• Grasshoppers that are infected with the hairworm parasite fling themselves into the water to their deaths, because the hairworm can only reproduce in water (You can all about it here- discarded lies-  "The parasitic Nematomorph hairworm (Spinochordodes tellinii) develops inside land-dwelling grasshoppers and crickets until the time comes for the worm to transform into an aquatic adult. Somehow mature hairworms brainwash their hosts into behaving in way they never usually would – causing them to seek out and plunge into water.  Once in the water the mature hairworms – which are three to four times longer that their hosts when extended – emerge and swim away to find a mate, leaving their host dead or dying in the water.")

All this is terrible, and it makes me wonder why should Toxoplasma gondi make women happy, social and sensual, and men dull, anti-social and morose... What advantage does it give the cats, and indirectly, the parasite? May be it finds women catty and so want to take men out of the equation?

Whatever. But it is a good idea that if you are a man and your girl keeps away from you, well, bring a cat in, but don't let it get near you.

I wonder what other parasites help us decide what we should do.