Which is to say, many members of our species who exhibit"alpha dog" tendencies in the business realm may be Toxo-positive. Feel like starting your own company? The Yellowstone wolf data hints that it's just the side effect of a protozoan inhabiting our brains in a failed attempt to make more protozoa. Maybe that business you admire wasn't founded by the Great and Powerful Oz, a heroic leader of epic proportions, but by the parasite behind the curtain.
So why would any of this make an infected wolf want to start its own pack? No one's really sure of theby which Toxo affects behavior. Maybe it increases production of testosterone. Maybe the brain cysts it causes in a host mess with neurotransmitters like dopamine, altering the brain's reward system. Or maybe it's just a generalized inflammatory response to infection. But whatever the mechanism, don't think of it as, like, alien parasite zombification.
🤨📸