Wolves at Yellowstone National Park exposed to Toxoplasma gondii took more risks than non-infected wolves, such as becoming pack leaders, researchers found.
. And when wolves lived in areas that overlapped cougar populations, they more often hadantibodies—likely obtained through direct contact with cat droppings or cysts in the environment, the researchers say. These infected wolves were then more likely to display risky behaviors than non-infected wolves, such as dispersing or becoming the breeding leaders within their pack.
“This study is a rare demonstration of a parasite infection influencing behavior in a wild mammal population,” the authors wrote in their paper, this month in Communications Biology. “These two life history behaviors represent some of the most important decisions a wolf can make in its lifetime and may have dramatic impacts on gray wolf fitness, distribution, and vital rates.”The findings, intriguing as they are, should ideally be confirmed by other studies before they’re assumed to be true (even in humans, there is an
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