This Is Your Brain on Parasites - How Tiny Creatures Manipulate Our Behavior and Shape Society

Kathleen McAuliffe

Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

2016

299 páginas

9h 58m

ISBN-10: B011H55MY0

Parasites can live only inside another animal and, as Kathleen McAuliffe reveals, these tiny organisms have many evolutionary motives for manipulating the behavior of their hosts. With astonishing precision, parasites can coax rats to approach cats, spiders to transform the patterns of their webs, and fish to draw the attention of birds that then swoop down to feast on them. We humans are hardly immune to their influence. Organisms we pick up from our own pets are strongly suspected of changing our personality traits and contributing to recklessness and impulsivity—even suicide. Germs that cause colds and the flu may alter our behavior even before symptoms become apparent.