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Or could it be that wolves that are already more likely to hunt cougars (thus eat them and get the parasite) have high risk taking behavior and are thus more likely to be pack leaders? And the parasite actually has a benign influence on the host?
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This is a fascinating and unexpected piece of information. I would be very intrigued to read your source.
Unmarried women vote Democratic, 68-31.
Unmarried men vote Republican, 52-45.
Married women, Republican, 56-42.
Married men, Republican, 59-39.
Here's an image purporting to describe the Reuters-Ipsos poll of 2012: https://i.imgur.com/I3ycNpC.png . (I haven't been able to find the actual poll.) It only gives the Republican share of the vote for each demographic, but Republicans+Democrats should be close to 100% of the vote. 1992 is an exception.
Unmarried women, 31% Republican.
Unmarried men, 41% Republican.
Married women, 55% Republican.
Married men, 58% Republican.
Imagine how dystopian that would sound in humans, like some science fiction horror. "All the leaders are secretly infected by parasites". Sounds like interesting sci fi movie premise.
Potetnially related: "Men Who Owned Cats As Kids May Have Higher Psychosis Risk" https://www.iflscience.com/men-who-owned-cats-as-kids-may-ha...
It could be that infection with T. gondii is sometimes the difference between simply having a predisposition towards schizophrenia and actually developing the symptoms. Pot use in the late teens and early 20s can have the same effect. It doesn't cause schizophrenia, but it may be a trigger than leads a genetically predisposed individual to develop the disorder.
Can we please do the same study with politicians?
It’s impressive to see T. Gondii evolve to influence their hosts to write positive PR. Joking aside, it makes sense to me that higher risk behavior on the host’s part would increase a parasite’s spread, since some of the energy that drives risk also increases the rate of physical interaction with the world; like a free roaming particle with a lot of momentum on a substrate. It is good to see more research looking int…
It's good research but there is a major caveat I didn't see it in this press release.
Before they answer questions like yours they need to have tracked when infection occured.
Simple conundrum are wolves who are infected with t. Gondii more likely to leave their pack? Or are wolves that leave their pack more likely to get infected?
Similarly for pack leaders. It might seem obtuse to ask for this but it is important to disentangle somewhat cause and correlation.
In humans it's theorised to increase risk of car accidents (based on a french study monitoring speeding and traffic rule obedience).
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Things also get interesting if you look at economic and social systems in this context.
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Not to mention that a large part of the relative under representation of married people in the Democratic voter base is due to relative over representation of younger people.
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How do you know you're not just catching cross correlation with age?
Age, socio-economic status, and other confounding factors. Not to mention, according to him, 40% is "barely".
This theory that institutions kind of have a tendency to perpetuate the conditions that necessitate their existence was developed by Durkheim, and like most of the other early sociologists, I really recommend it over newer stuff. It's not conspiratorial, the idea is that organizations that do this outsurvive groups that legitimately solve the problems they are created to solve, and so through an evolutionary process, the longest lived and deepest institutions tend to be ones with behaviors ironically antithetical to their supposed mission (even if the members of the institution totally believe in and earnestly support the mission).
The typical example (at least when I was into this kind of stuff) is the Catholic Church earnestly helping the poor, but doing so in a way that societaly, will never actually alleviate poverty, or may even exacerbate it. Now days I tend to hear this line of thinking used about liberals supporting policies that "help" minorities but really perpetuate the cycle of poverty.
Whether you believe this is beside the point, I only mean to suggest that OP is wrong, but a steelman of his point is deeper than it seems, and deserves our good faith imo.
