SQ
Senior Member - Vegan for the animals
Rats are prey animals and normally become frightened or terrified when they smell a predator such as a cat
Please see the article: https://www.scientificamerican.com/...infected-rats-love-their-11-08-17/?redirect=1
Is this brain parasite ok and harmless in rats???
I have no idea but …. it causes cysts in the brain, is a "long term infection" and long term infections can cause various health issues such as neurodegenerative diseases and brain inflammation
see https://nutritionfacts.org/video/toxoplasmosis-a-manipulative-foodborne-brain-parasite/
and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0023277
I guess the good news for rat owners (and other humans) is that an infected rat needs to be eaten in order to spread the parasite dormant in their brains - which is why infected rats and mice like predators such as cats
When a healthy rat smells a cat, it flees.
But rats infected with the Toxoplasma brain parasite actually follow cat odors, often presumably to their doom, red in tooth and claw.
Now researchers have found out exactly what’s going on in the rat’s infected brain—it’s in love.
Please see the article: https://www.scientificamerican.com/...infected-rats-love-their-11-08-17/?redirect=1
Is this brain parasite ok and harmless in rats???
I have no idea but …. it causes cysts in the brain, is a "long term infection" and long term infections can cause various health issues such as neurodegenerative diseases and brain inflammation
see https://nutritionfacts.org/video/toxoplasmosis-a-manipulative-foodborne-brain-parasite/
toxoplasma can reproduce in cats, but how is it going to get itself from the brain of an infected mouse into the cat? It can hijack the mouse’s brain and hijack their “native, inborn fear of the odor of cats into an attraction to that odor.” The parasite causes the mouse to develop a fatal attraction to cats, which is good for the parasite, not so good for the mouse.
and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0023277
I guess the good news for rat owners (and other humans) is that an infected rat needs to be eaten in order to spread the parasite dormant in their brains - which is why infected rats and mice like predators such as cats
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