I’ve been getting interested in parasites lately. I watched a couple vids of some remarkable behavioral changes that occur in the host. For instance, whipworms, after having matured inside a grasshopper, will influence the grasshopper’s brain chemistry to the extent that the grasshopper will make a suicide plunge into water. Then the whipworms burst out in a sick gory display and mate, which they aren’t able to do unless they’re submerged in H2O. Search youtube for whipworms if you’re interested.

The prevalence of parasites in organisms, combined with the fact that some parasites have host behavior changing abilities, leads me to wonder if parasites influence human behavior to a much larger extent than anyone believes.