Rats on Valium, cat urine, and parasites.

Ever wonder how anti-anxiety drugs are tested? Apparently, rats have little panic attacks when exposed to cat urine, so you dope up the rats, then expose them to cat urine. The Loom article has more to do with a particularly interesting cat parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, which spends part of its life in rats, hoping (well, one-celled organisms don't hope) for a cat to eat its host rat. To facilitate the eating process, Toxoplasma gondii makes the rat forget its fear of cats. Sort of like the liqour in The Little Brown Mouse song that everyone is forced to sing at summer camp. Now the really interesting part of all of this is that treating the infected rats with anti-schizophrenia drugs, reverses the parasite's effects. Which leads researchers to beleive that human schizophrenia may relate to Toxoplasma gondii infection. The bottom line for humans: don't eat cat crap, and order your meat well cooked. The bottom line for cats: eat only rats that run away.