Tissue Protozoa: That Cat Will Really Drive Me Crazy One of These Days

In earlier chapters we had shown how parasites have been able to manipulate their hosts to the advantage of the parasite. For example, we have seen how the tapeworm Schistocephalus solidus affects their fish host in such a way that the fish becomes more likely to be caught and eaten by birds, thus favoring the tapeworm to complete its life cycle in the bird. We have also discussed how the liver fluke Dicrocoelium dendriticum manipulated the behavior of the ant in such a way that enables both to be more likely ingested by sheep which happen to be the final host of that parasite. Those examples however only involved animal hosts, and the idea that animal hosts may have been unwittingly manipulated by parasites is relatively easily accepted without creating much of a fuss.