abstract:

The manipulation hypothesis states a parasite may alter host behaviour for its own benefit, often by enhancing its transmission rate through the food chain. This paper reviews studies on the potential impact of one parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, on host behaviour, both on rodents, where altered responses may be proposed to benefit the parasite, and humans, where altered responses may arise as a side-effect of infection with no current adaptive significance.

I think that whilst, “cats no longer eat humans” – tigers and lions are still cats. Domestication would both help the parasite, lead humans to be less afraid of cats. Also, whilst from the point of view of the parasite, infection of humans have no obvious evolutionary benefit to the parasite – it would in the context of domestication – it increases the chance of the cat surviving.

A side effect of this would be the phenomena of cats on the internet.

Urlesque lists all the sites that are not infected! There’s hope for the human race yet!

What i hope will lead people to look at how they view internet felines, and their control over our brains and behaviour. Let’s see just what effect it will have on society. Are you brave enough to go a day with no kitties on the web?

Cats rule the internet. Think about all the funny cat photos and videos that infest your IM conversations, Facebook walls and e-mail forwards from mom — our feline overlords have sneakily solidified themselves as a staple of the interweb humor we love so dearly. … Urlesque is organizing a web-wide ban on cat-related coverage on 9.9.09 — A Day Without Cats on the Internet. Why only one day? Well let’s be honest, that’s probably only as long as we’ll last before a hilarious video comes crashing into our inbox. But for one day, we will abstain… for you… for the cats.

Video Link http://video.aol.com/aolvideo/Urlesque/no-cats/36566401001

Want to commit to it? Sign up to the petition!

found via neatorama

“Solicitation purring is probably more acceptable to humans than overt meowing”.

Basically they change the purr to sound like a baby.

Cats have a vocal way of manipulating their owners into doing their bidding, according to a study.

Karen McComb, a researcher from the University of Sussex, was inspired by her own cat, Pepo, who continually woke her up in the mornings with an “insistent and rather annoying” purr that reliably motivated her to get up and feed him.

Unlike regular, low frequency purring, further study revealed that this “solicitation purr” contained an embedded sound with a similar frequency to a baby’s cry; a sound that humans have an inherent bias to respond to.

She and her colleagues played recordings of these purrs to human volunteers, who found them to be “more urgent and harder to ignore” than regular purring.

Video: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8148192.stm and There’s even a video of it on the SciNewsBlog.

via the b3ta newsletter

Why? Because non-infected people are not infected by the animal. There is no control making the internet user friendier to the animal. Cat-controlled humans think the walrus is funny because they are controlled by the cat. It deflects attention away from the cat! – A walrus is funny exactly because it shines a light on the whole lol cat phenomena.

bukkits + wulrus = no threat to species

From: http://www.catswhothrowupgrass.com/kill.php

What this chap is doing is selling a little gadget that will track your cat as it goes about its business.

It can also be set up with a camera and gprs device to send back location to the server.

Madness. Cats are invading locative industries now. If ever there was a good example of using the internet to demarcate feline territory.

I do love it though . They sell for about 35 Euro.

Check out his cat cam pictures. These are real interesting to see what these animals see as they go about their business.

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Also, from Flickr:

He got his thing from http://global.mobileaction.com/product/product_i-gotU_USB.jsp  (which appears to be look like the same device)