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Here’s a reason no one calls cats “[hu]man’s best friend”: their poop may be toxic to us. And they deposit approximately 1.2 million tons of it into the environment each year. Researchers at Johns Hopkins are doing the heroic work of, uh, digging deeper into the problem of Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite that’s found in feline feces, and that can cause serious health problems. The people most at risk for Toxoplasma are pregnant women and those with already-compromised immune systems. The parasite has been linked to brain infections and loss of cognitive function, and has been posed as a medical explanation for Crazy Cat Lady Syndrome (not an officially recognized disease). The good news is, most pet owners don’t have anything to worry about. The real problem we need to address, say the researchers, is the United States’ population of feral cats, which may number as many as 60 million. +++ Are you cheerful?… Read More
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Here’s a reason no one calls cats “[hu]man’s best friend”: their poop may be toxic to us. And they deposit approximately 1.2 million tons of it into the environment each year. Researchers at Johns Hopkins are doing the heroic work of, uh, digging deeper into the problem of Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite that’s found in feline feces, and that can cause serious health problems. The people most at risk for Toxoplasma are pregnant women and those with already-compromised immune systems. The parasite has been linked to brain infections and loss of cognitive function, and has been posed as a medical explanation for Crazy Cat Lady Syndrome (not an officially recognized disease). The good news is, most pet owners don’t have anything to worry about. The real problem we need to address, say the researchers, is the United States’ population of feral cats, which may number as many as 60 million. +++ Are you cheerful?… Read More
The post This Week in Research: Optimism is Good, Cat Poop is Bad appeared first on Baltimore Fishbowl.
