Civilization and its Discontents

Once again, cats are in the news.
There is good news and there is bad news:

The good news is that cats (and the content of their feces) may be responsible for the empathy and affection that some people have felt and continue to feel for other people throughout the millennia - and perhaps have made a subtle but lasting impact on the direction of human history. Studies now indicate that cat feces has been equally influential on the popular music, fashion, and drug preferences in the young and impressionable. (e.g., cats= reefer; dogs, turles, ferrets, et.al.=horse.)

While some people (i.e., Kurt) have insisted offblog time and again that cats=schizophrenia, this link remains anecdotal at best. Nevertheless, aren't the costs we as a society and as individuals must bear for the mental illness of a few worth the friendship and love of the many?

This development ratchets up the "Nature vs. Nurture" issue - also referred to as "Nature vs. Culture," "The Raw and the Cooked," and, formerly, "Ashlee vs. Jessica" to an entirely new level of controversy: in each case, the duality is an illusion; contending forces are one and the same. Unless pregnant (in which case disaster may be imminent), women, when exposed to cats and their fecal matter, tend to become exactly the way women are, stereotypically, supposed to be. Men, it seems, become dull and complacently accepting of many otherwise untenable situations - which, according to man-on-the-street surveys and this blogger's personal experience, may also be as nature intended.

Feline toilet habits have proven invaluable to the progress of mankind. We know that cats can get the job done, if given the chance. If only the United States, almost all of Africa, China, Korea, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, the Taliban, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Europe excluding the Netherlands and Scandinavia, Russia and the former Soviet republics, Southeast Asia, the South American drug cartels, Halliburton, al Qaeda, and IKEA were more cat-centric and fece-philic societies, we could all look forward to another 1,000 years of world peace. As this is, sadly, not the case, the data suggest that our only hope may be to trigger a pandemic of cats. Osama Bin Laden? Not a cat person.

The bad news: Once again, scientists are alarmingly quick to tar women and the mentally ill with the same brush. They have always been quick to judge intense concern and ruthless integrity as "insecurity" and "guilt," but as those of us plagued with concern and strangled by our integrity know better, they just don't understand us. Nobody does. Except our cats.


8/9/06
Cat Parasite May Have Altered Human History



Kevin Laferty is a smart, cautious, thoughtful scientist who doesn't hate cats, but he has put forth a provocative theory that suggests that a clever cat parasite may alter human cultures on a massive scale. His phone hasn't stopped ringing since he published one of the strangest research papers to come out of the mill in quite awhile.

The parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, has been transmitted indirectly from cats to roughly half the people on the planet, and it has been shown to affect human personalities in different ways.

Research has shown that women who are infected with the parasite tend to be more warm, outgoing and attentive to others, while infected men tend to be less intelligent and probably a bit boring. But both men and women who are infected are more prone to feeling guilty and insecure. Other researchers have linked the parasite to schizophrenia.

Toxoplasma, he notes, is "frighteningly amazing." It can change the personality of a rat so much that the rat surrenders itself to a cat, just as the parasite wanted. The parasite's eggs are shed in a cat's feces. A rat comes along, eats the feces, and becomes infected. The behavior of the rat undergoes a dramatic change, making the rat more adventuresome, and more likely to hang out around cats. The cat eats the rat, and the parasite completes its life cycle.

That manipulation of the local ecology is not unusual for a parasite, Laferty says. "This is something that many parasites do," he says. "Many manipulate hosts' behavior." So it wasn't much of a jump to the next question. "We have a parasite in our brain that is trying to get transmitted to a cat," he says. "This changes an individual's personality." So if enough personalities are changed in a given society, will the culture of that society also be changed?

He's not suggesting that it's a big player in cultural evolution. Lots of other things are more powerful, ranging from geography to weather to the availability of natural resources. But if enough of us are infected, and undergo personality changes, will that also alter our combined personalities, or our culture? Laferty admits anthropologists are not likely to embrace his theory. A single powerful leader can have a dramatic impact on a culture. We can all think of examples. But can the collective personality have a similar effect?

"Anthropologists are not in agreement that you can drive a culture from the bottom up," Laferty says. But he sees that happening throughout the parasitic world, involving many types of animals, so why is it inconceivable that it could also be happening among humans?

It will be a long time before we have the answer to that, if we ever do, but in the meantime here's a bit of good news. Cat lovers need not get rid of their cats. The chances are not great that a modern cat, kept on a diet of safe cat food and not left to feed off rats, will transmit the parasite to humans. It's possible, but not likely, Laferty says.

And that leads him to this final comment: "This isn't about trying to freak cat owners out," he says. "Simply having a cat as a pet doesn't mean you're going to get infected, for sure." Of course, maybe some other parasite is making him say that.


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