Question: Do you think it is possible for a disease to infect a person and make that person attack and infect other people sort of like a zombie infection in the movies?
Well maybe rabies might give some signs of zombie like behaviour. But sleeping sickness, caused by the protozoa Trypanosoma brucei, which is transmitted by the tetse fly. General symptoms of it are anxiety, drowsiness during the day, insomnia at night, irritability, rapid mood changes. sweating, weakness. So that would give some.
But nothing like we see in the movies, maybe James has knows of one, or maybe he has invented one :p
Rabies is close as when dogs get infected they start to behave more aggressively as the rabies is transmitted in the saliva. Aggressive dogs bite so that makes the saliva transmission more effective.
Toxoplasma is also pretty interesting. It’s a parasite that infects cats but doesn’t make them do anything unusual, instead it sometimes infects rats. When it does that it breaks the rats impulse control, making them more spontaneous. Sounds like nothing but a spontaneous rat comes out of hiding more often making it easier got cats to catch and then the parasite can infect the cat again!
I love parasites, they do the weirdest stuff.
Hi Pnemono,
Well maybe rabies might give some signs of zombie like behaviour. But sleeping sickness, caused by the protozoa Trypanosoma brucei, which is transmitted by the tetse fly. General symptoms of it are anxiety, drowsiness during the day, insomnia at night, irritability, rapid mood changes. sweating, weakness. So that would give some.
But nothing like we see in the movies, maybe James has knows of one, or maybe he has invented one :p
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Rabies is close as when dogs get infected they start to behave more aggressively as the rabies is transmitted in the saliva. Aggressive dogs bite so that makes the saliva transmission more effective.
Toxoplasma is also pretty interesting. It’s a parasite that infects cats but doesn’t make them do anything unusual, instead it sometimes infects rats. When it does that it breaks the rats impulse control, making them more spontaneous. Sounds like nothing but a spontaneous rat comes out of hiding more often making it easier got cats to catch and then the parasite can infect the cat again!
I love parasites, they do the weirdest stuff.
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Hi Pnemo,
Yes, it is certainly possible. Some parasitic infections can make people quite paranoid, as James and Dustin have mentioned.
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