Are Parasites Literally Controlling Your Behavior?
Leave a commentOctober 6, 2014 by Brian
No. Probably not. Except for possibly the parasite known as Toxoplasma Gandii, or Toxo for short. Here is an article on Toxo: “How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy” We didn’t talk about that very much, but one of the doctors in our group described his experience with Toxo and that its existence is legit.
We did watch a very creepy video about the very real world of parasitic influence on the rest of the animal kingdom. From shrimp, to crickets and wasps, flamingos, cockroaches, rats, cats and trout, parasitic influence over behavior is everywhere. And, it is hard not to see a “design” in the way that this process works.
There was some lively debate about intelligent design vs. random mutation. In the end, many of us concluded that random mutations, even over millennia, don’t really account for the perfect cycle of life represented in nature – even in these super-creepy parasitic examples.
Check it out: