Your cat could be driving you mad

I WAS interested to learn of the recent discovery that a parasite,  Toxoplasma gondii, can control the human brain.

The owner of the brain may act in a way humans do not normally act. The discoverer of this phenomenon, Jaroslav Flegr, a professor of psychology and parasitology at Charles University in Prague, believes that Toxo-induced bravado or disregard for personal safety may be the cause of many car accidents.

Flegr, in seeking biological clues as to why, as a young man, he enjoyed jay-walking across fast traffic and, even more suicidally, speaking out against the Communist government of Czechoslovakia, had his brain scanned. He found, living within it, the Toxo parasite, which he probably caught from contact with a cat. Toxo begins life in cats and, deposited by feces, moves into other mammals, usually rats, for part of its life cycle.