readme:james's blog

Quite a few years ago, as a kid, I read an article about a fungus that changed the behaviour of insects. I think it was an article in Focus.

I had nightmares for ages afterwards.

This fungus, upon infesting an insect, causes it to change its behaviour and climb to a high point - at the top of a plant, say. Once there, the insect kills itself. At this point, the fungus grows tendrils packed with spores and spreads them from the nice high vantage point.

There were photos.

It seemed such a frightening, creepy, alien thing. Like prawns, but worse.

And now I find out that there's an organism called Toxoplasma gondii that pulls the same freaky Jedi trick on mammals. To increase the likelihood of being passed on, T. Gondii causes the host to become reckless, rash and foolhardy (and probably a bit of a cad and a bounder, to boot!), with the intention of causing an early death. Dead animals get eaten by other animals and that's how T. gondii finds a new host.

The scary thing is that it affects humans in the same way. Consistently drive too fast on the motorway? Maybe you have it already.

It's even been linked to schizophrenia, with higher rates of infection in schizophrenics.

Who knows how many other mind controlling nasties haven't yet been discovered?

Here's an article I found on insects and fungi - look at the second photo and try not to have dreams about sprouting long, bulbously terminated "fruiting bodies". And here's the Wikipedia article on T. gondii.

Sleep tight.

# posted by Digehode @ 8:43 pm