WTF? This HAS to be a friggin joke!

[Man In Black]

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20975555-1242,00.html

About 40 per cent of the world's population is infected with Toxoplasma gondii, including about eight million Australians.
Human infection generally occurs when people eat raw or undercooked meat that has cysts containing the parasite, or accidentally ingest some of the parasite's eggs excreted by an infected cat.


"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.
"In short, it can make men behave like alley cats and women behave like sex kittens''.
Dr Boulter said the recent Czech Republic research was not conclusive, but was backed up by animal studies that found infection also changes the behaviour of mice.

[Otto]

Nope. S'truth.

Not that I like to cite wikipedia or anything, but still:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii
The U.S. NHANES (2004-2005) national probability sample found that 33.1% of U.S. persons above 12 years of age had Toxoplasma-specific IgG antibodies, indicating that they had been infected with the organism. This prevalence has significantly increased from the 1999-2000 data.

It is estimated that up to 65% of all people worldwide are infected with Toxoplasma gondii. The incidence of infection varies greatly between countries, with ranges of 22% in the UK to over 88% (or 45% depending on the study) in France, and South Korea's rate is only 4.3% where Brazil's rate is a high 66.9%.

This is not particularly unusual for parasites that cause no significant harm to the carriers. A parasite that damages or kills the host quickly is basically a failure as a lifeform. It will be unable to spread and reproduce if the host dies. So the best parasites don't cause any harm to the host. Similarly, the best hosts are not harmed by these parasites. So evolution works in both directions here. Animals adapt to withstand the parasites, parasites adapt to not kill the animals. Eventually the relationship becomes symbiotic.

Look at all the bacteria and other stuff in your intestine for a quick example. They digest a lot of your food. Without you, they cannot live. Without them, you cannot live. You think it was always that way?

Another example: Syphillis. When syphilis first appeared in the 1500's, it was fatal. Caused all manner of nastiness. People died horribly within a couple months, big pustules, flesh falling off them and other icky things happening. Nowadays, it doesn't cause that sort of thing at all. Yes, it's bad, but not a horrific death even if untreated. Most of the time it's not even fatal, though it can be. And it's treatable with various drugs and such. The damaging forms of the disease led people to not be able spread it easily, and those forms died off. By the 1600's, it had evolved to the point where it didn't cause that sort of thing, and all the people who were susceptible to the really bad forms of it were dead. Evolution in action.