Parasite deludes rats into liking cats
By Susan Milius
A protozoan that infects rats dims their wariness around cats and can even lead to what Oxford researchers call a fatal attraction.
That’s too bad for the rat, but it works for the parasite, explains Manuel Berdoy in England.
The protozoan, Toxoplasma gondii, needs to jump from rat to feline to complete its life cycle. The rat’s getting caught by a cat fits the parasite’s agenda, Berdoy and his colleagues argue in the Aug. 7 Proceedings of the Royal Society of London: Biological Sciences.