每日英语听力

当前播放

Curiosity Killed the ... Mouse?

Parasites live on or even inside another organism.

And some can even change the behavior of their host to boost the odds of their transmission.

Take the single-celled Toxoplasma gondii.

Mice infected with this bug appear to become attracted to the smell of cat pee, an odor that uninfected mice smartly avoid.

The infection thus raises the chances that a mouse will wind up in a cat's mouth.

Obviously,bad news for the mousebut good news for the parasite, which needs a kitty to complete its life cycle and spread to additional hosts.

Devious,indeed.

But it turns out this cunning scheme may be less precisely targeted than it initially appearsbecause a new study finds that Toxoplasma doesn't specifically eliminate a mouse's natural aversion to cats.

Rather the infection makes them generally less anxious and more adventurouswhich makes them them curious about cats and pretty much everything else.

Their work appears in the journal Cell Reports.

下载全新《每日英语听力》客户端,查看完整内容
点击播放