Humpjones

Do Parasites Control Your Sex Life?

Posted Mar 23, 2007 10 comments

Quite a question, I know.  I’m full of strange questions these days.  For instance: are you familiar with the single-celled organism known as Toxoplasma Gondii?  Because odds are actually pretty good that they’re familiar with you. According to statistics, there’s over 60 million Americans walking around with a Toxoplasmosis infection.  According to biologists, Toxoplasmosis has probably been around for as long as cats and humans have co-existed—many thousands of years.

What’s most interesting about Toxoplasmosis is that it creates neurological and behavioral changes in the host animal. This raises some very, very strange questions, and we’ll ask ‘em all here today.

It has been found that the parasite has the ability to change the behavior of its host: infected rats and mice are less fearful of cats - in fact, some of the infected rats seek out cat-urine-marked areas. This effect is advantageous to the parasite, which will be able to sexually reproduce if its host is eaten by a cat. The mechanism for this change is not completely understood, but there is evidence that toxoplasmosis infection raises dopamine levels in infected mice.

Where You End and They Begin

Now we’re elbow-deep in the Disturbing Questions about boundaries and identity.  Are you your body? If your body weight is around 70% water—and it is—is that water part of you? Or is it just water that’s in your body?

So what about the rest of you?  This leaves around 30% of your body weight, the actual tissue of organs, muscles, cartilage and bone—but that’s not all.  In fact, by most estimates more than half of the cells in your body are actually bacteria, viruses and fungus.  You have no nervous system control over or communication with these critters, but they’re in you—billions of them—so are they part of you?  Or are they just critters that are in your body? 

The Human Genome Project, like all real science, wound up raising a ton of new questions and making our old questions irrelevant.  Once the whole thing was hammered out and codified, everyone found themselves looking around the room and shrugging, because it turned out there’s not nearly enough information contained in the human genome to actually build a body. Yet, obviously, bodies happen, all the time.

Real-Deal Mind Control, Baby

Do you know Chris King?  No, that’s actually not a photo of him to the left. He’s kind of a patron saint for me, since I think he’s one of the Major Geniuses of our time, and I’m about to quote him:

“The 5 x 10^4 genes governing central nervous system development, around 60% of human genes, cannot informationally specify the connections for 10^11 neurons and 10^15 synapses.”

I realize that’s not even English to a lot of people, but he’s basically pointing out that even though most of our genes are devoted to building the human brain, there’s still not nearly enough information contained in those genes to actually build a brain.  So there’s gotta be something else at work.  Chris King has worked out, in clear mathematics, what that “something” is—but I’m going to ignore that completely, and suggest that the “something” could just as easily be some sort of bacteria or virus.

This would be pretty simple to build a case for, which is creepy.  After all, the structure of our neurons is being sculpted every day—rather than reinvent the wheel here, let’s just quote Howard Bloom:

An infant’s brain is sculpted by the culture into which the child is born. Six-month olds can distinguish or produce every sound in virtually every human language. But within a mere four months, nearly two thirds of this capacity has been sliced away. The slashing of ability is accompanied by ruthless alterations in cerebral tissue. Brain cells are measured against the requirements of the physical and interpersonal environment. The 50% of neurons found useful thrive. The 50% which remain unexercised are literally forced to die. Thus the floor plan
underlying the mind is crafted on-site to fit an existing framework of community.

So if Toxoplasmosis can alter—perhaps even regulate—levels of hormones, such as dopamine, which is basically the motivation behind nearly all human behavior, then it’s not a stretch to conclude they’re literally sculpting the host organism’s brain.  Of course, we’re not rats, so an attraction to cat urine wouldn’t do Toxoplasma Gondii any good—but then...what would?

Let’s Get Dumb and Screw

For a long time, biologists assumed that if you didn’t get sick, Toxoplasmosis didn’t really affect you.  Like most human assumptions, this has turned out to be dead wrong.

“Interestingly, the effect of infection is different between men and women,’’ Dr Boulter writes in the latest issue of Australasian Science magazine.

“Infected men have lower IQs, achieve a lower level of education and have shorter attention spans. They are also more likely to break rules and take risks, be more independent, more anti-social, suspicious, jealous and morose, and are deemed less attractive to women.

“On the other hand, infected women tend to be more outgoing, friendly, more promiscuous, and are considered more attractive to men compared with non-infected controls.”

There’s enough food for thought here for about six months of nightmares—I’d apologize but the damage has been done.  More interesting still is that Toxoplasmosis makes a woman much more likely to give birth to male children, for the rest of her life.  So let’s see: Taxoplasmosis makes women more outgoing and promiscuous, and more likely to have male children, those male children will grow up infected and be “more anti-social, suspicious, jealous and morose”—sounds like a recipe for disaster to me, but perhaps the reader will disagree.

It also sounds like a recipe for thousands of years of senseless violence, irrational religious beliefs, material greed and the supression of women.  Or as some folks prefer to call it, “The Whole of Human History.” This is a huge and humbling vista, and we’ll wrap up with some choice words from Taxoplasmosis expert Kevin Lafferty, who puts it in such an understated way you can almost forget how horrific this shit really is:

“In populations where this parasite is very common, mass personality modification could result in cultural change. This may explain a substantial proportion of human population differences we see in cultural aspects that relate to ego, money, material possessions, work and rules.”

Filed in: Sex Science

Next entry: 300: The Hottest Gay Porno Of All Time

Previous Entry: An Honest Argument Against Sex