Culture. Am I glad that I hate Cats

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    So ... jeremygillies tweeted me this link, and if you're a cat owner, you may want to listen to this:

    http://www.wnyc.org/flashplayer/player.html#/play/%2Fstream%2Fxspf%2F133981

    And perhaps watch the utterly marvelous Robert Sapolsky here:

    http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/sapolsky09/sapolsky09_index.html

    Basically, there's a freaky little parasite called Toxoplasma that lives in cat guts, and is oftern excreted in their faeces. If the poop gets anywhere near you, the parasite can get into your brain and do all kinds of freaky shit with you. Changing your behaviour, making you schziophrenic, giving you an attraction to cat wee.

    Watch the videos.

    Shunk: keep your missus away from your clowder! In all seriousness, cat faeces and pregnant woman == massively bad idea.

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    Meh - toxoplasmosis is old news.

    I've got a cat, lots of our neighbours have cats, and I'm still a perfectly normal sociopath...

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    This is that thing that's massively over-exaggerated and people are more likely to get it from raw and undercooked meat, farm animals or gardening. So take your anti-cat propaganda elsewhere, Mr Harper! Dogs get that shit too!
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    Two different groups independently have reported that people who are Toxo-infected have three to four times the likelihood of being killed in car accidents involving reckless speeding.

    Does that not freak you out a little bit? Sapolsky gets all excited about what this says about the concept of free-will, and I'm with him on that one. I've always been fascinated by the idea that our brain has a whole layer that just conceals from us what we're really doing (I think they call it conciousness) but to have -- effectively -- clinical evidence that a parasite can make you reckless by literally cross-wiring your danger and pleasure responses ... fucking hell. It's amazing.

    And there's a very, very good chance that you're infected with this -- which means that sometimes you may do something a bit reckless, and you think you're doing it freely but it's actually a parasite in your brain trying to get you killed so you'll end up in the belly of a cat.

    There's a great quote in the second video from Sapolsky:

    On a certain level, this is a protozoan parasite that knows more about the neurobiology of anxiety and fear than 25,000 neuroscientists standing on each other's shoulders, and this is not a rare pattern.

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    @Shunk: Nope. This parasite can ONLY reproduce in the gut of cats. It's whole lifecycle and pattern of behaviour is geared to making rats love the smell of cat wee whilst short-circuiting their fear of cats response and thus get too close and get eaten (so they can reproduce again). It's absolutely awesome.

    This isn't crazy science, this is probably the world's leading neuroscientist explaining that a huge chunk of the population are fucking zombies! (OK, I may have exaggerated that).

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    The eating of raw meat, such as “carpaccio”, Parma's ham, sausages, and pork increases the incidence of toxoplasmosis. — http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2659479/

    By the way, to some degree, cats and their feces are getting a bad rap about toxoplasmosis. Research in Italy indicates that, here at least, in about 60 per cent of the cases the vector by which it reaches human beings is uncooked raw or “cured” meat, things like carpaccio or prosciutto and salame. The curing process, unlike cooking or freezing, does not necessarily kill T. gondii. — http://www.upperitaly.net/index.php?id=65

    Incidence in Scandinavia is only around 7 or 8 per cent of the population. It is something like 20 per cent in the US... In Italy... immunological testing appears to show that about 45 to 50 per cent of the population has been infected by the bug

    Ingesting meat of free-range livestock, mainly sheep, is associated with human toxoplasmosis in European countries. — http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6TD7-4KPFKV8-2&_user=10&_coverDate=12%2F20%2F2006&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1393597300&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=00feaae92b8259404793a29f762a17d9


    BAN TASTY MEAT!
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    Regardless of the method of transmission, it's a feline parasite though. It can only reproduce in the guts of cats.

    So it goes from cats, to cat faeces, to pigs/sheep/cows/whatever -- but it all starts with the cats.

    As such, while 60% of infection in Italy may be via meat, it's still more hazardous to have cat poo around.

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    Were you raped by cats as a child, or what? Leave them alone. The fact that they can grow mind-control bugs in their stomaches just makes them doubly awesome.

    Dogs, on the otherhand, are retarded. Last night I gave the missus' dog a 3/4 life-sized stuffed Golden Retriever toy (he's a Golden Retreiver too), and he repeatedly raped it in front of me. He fucked it for hours. Then he cried when the stuffed dog wouldn't come out into the garden to play with him. Dogs are stupid. And rapists.
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    Haha. Dogs may be retarded, but they've clearly got their priorities straight.

    Cats (and their zombie parasites) are evil.

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    Toxoplasmosis... isn't that what finally killed Tommy from Trainspotting when he had the AIDS?
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    Yep. The smack had nowt to do with it...

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    So you know better than the doctor, do you? Or the actor that played the doctor? Even though he was never on screen? Fuck you.
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    thats pretty cool - maybe i should get a cat, ive always had a propensity (when owning a car - which I currently don't) to drive like a twat but maybe i could improve on that.
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    So you know better than the doctor, do you? Or the actor that played the doctor? Even though he was never on screen? Fuck you.

    Yes, yes, yes, and no thank you.

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    Damn you Hawkes.
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    Toxic Plasmoswotsit is old news, Hook work is the new kid on the block. Found in snails and slugs and rats, passed into dogs/cats and then into us ;)

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