Toxoplasma is a parasite that a cat can carry and pass on to mice. Infected mice lose their fear of cats and walk right up to them to be slaughtered. I would not have believed this could be true but for the Smithsonian article. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...ects-mice-they-never-fear-cats-again-9757150/ ... from the article: Toxoplasma gondii, a protozoan parasite that can only sexually reproduce within cat guts, regularly infects warm-blooded mammals. In healthy humans, it usually does not cause adverse affects, though it can seriously tamper with other species’ behaviors. Infected mice, for example, are known to approach their arch-enemy, the cat, without a shred of fear. Toxoplasma changes the mice’s innate, natural fear of cats, though researchers don’t really understand how the parasite pulls this off. Some speculated that inflammation or parasite eggs in the brain might account for the mice’s inexplicable feline love. Now, it seems, that is not the case. According to new research, that rewiring persists even after the mice have been purged of their parasite load. Some aspects that puzzle me about the loss of the genetic survival skills of the mouse and their replacement with the tendency for casual mouse suicide are these; it is radical, it is specific and it is complex. Perhaps it's my conspiratorial mindset kicking in but this does not seem like something nature could come up with on her own.
Good question. The article doesn't speak on it. I'd suggest cat urine or feces might infect mice but the article stresses that uninfected mice would avoid these things as much as a cat itself. Perhaps infected mice could pass it to the uninfected but that still begs the question of how the infected mouse or mice got that way in the first place. So ... don't know. Now I'll ask you something you don't know. What's the 674th digit in the irrational number Pi? Okay, we're even. One Million Digits of Pi On One Page! https://www.piday.org/million/
I once had a geometry teacher try to convince me that πr² I told him "Pie are not square, pie are round." the dumass
Who knew such scandalous parasitic hanky panky was going on in a cat's digestive system. Now I am worried about how @Lon Tanner is going to take this news of such lascivious activity in Cranberry's digestive tract. Perhaps Lonny will adopt a pet mouse. Maybe this explains the Cowardly Lion in the Wizard of Oz. He was surrounded by aggressive rodents and since it was his own fault for harboring, breeding, and spreading such parasites, he humbled himself with cowardice as repentance. Perhaps he wasn't a coward, just humble.
My Dad used to tell that joke over and over and over. You're reawakening childhood traumas here, but that happens everyday with me.
Some might say it takes a real dumbass to mispell dumbass. Not me, though. Now where's that huge smileyface?
. Well, such a drastic action might have been overkill. We won't discuss Canberry's possible urinary infection, so put away that catheter.