Tuesday, November 04, 2003

No, it isn't the Weekly World News

Feeling Sexy? It Could Be Your Cat:
Want to make a special someone purr? Maybe you should give her a cat.

A study has shown that domestic cats infected with a parasite called toxoplasma gondii can actually alter the personalities of their human owners, turning women into “sex kittens" and men into “alley cats.”

“We found they [the infected women] were more easygoing, more warm-hearted, had more friends and cared more about how they looked. However, they were also less trustworthy and had more relationships with men,” Dr. Jaroslav Flegr, who conducted the study at Charles University in Prague, told London’s Sunday Times newspaper.
Here, kitty, kitty.

But there's a down side.
Infected men, on the other hand, became more aggressive, less well-groomed, undesirable loners who were more likely to be suspicious and jealous.

“They tended to dislike following rules,” Flegr told the Times.
Ruh Oh!

And while I haven't read the full study, the article's description makes it look like another instance where the researchers should have remembered that "correlation is not causation". Another doctor quoted later in the article says much the same thing.