Skip to content

The Crazy Cat Lady, Explained

An evolutionary biologist named Jaroslav Flegr argues that many house cats carry organisms that invade our brains, leading to mental disorders like schizophrenia as well as causing suicides and car crashes.
Sign up for Big Think on Substack
The most surprising and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every week, for free.

Why do people hoard pets? Psychologists have explained the phenomenon as arising from early childhood experiences. Animals are often stable fixtures in an otherwise dysfunctional life. 

Yet what if your cat makes you even more dysfunctional? An evolutionary biologist named Jaroslav Flegr argues that many house cats carry organisms that invade our brains, leading to mental disorders like schizophrenia as well as causing suicides and car crashes. In fact, according to Flegr, cats may “kill as many people as malaria, or at least a million people a year.”

Flegr says the cause of all the harm is an intestinal parasite called Toxoplasma. There’s a reason pregnant women are told to stay away from litter boxes. Toxoplasma is found in cat stools. 

Is Flegr on to something? Read this fascinating article at The Atlantic. 

Sign up for Big Think on Substack
The most surprising and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every week, for free.
Related
A bearded man wearing glasses and a plaid shirt speaks with a microphone clipped to his collar in front of a purple background with white dots.
The Well
How Rainn Wilson discovered sacredness
The hospital where Rainn Wilson’s wife and son nearly died became his own personal holy site. There, he discovered that the sacred can exist in places we least expect it. During his talk at A Night of Awe and Wonder, he explained how the awe we feel in moments of courage and love is moral beauty — and following it might be the start of our spiritual revolution.
▸
13 min
—
with
Rainn Wilson
Up Next