This Is Your Brain on Parasites

How Tiny Creatures Manipulate Our Behavior and Shape Society

De: Kathleen McAuliffe

Narrado por: Nicol Zanzarella

A riveting investigation of the myriad ways that parasites control how other creatures - including humans - think, feel, and act.

These tiny organisms can live only inside another animal, and, as McAuliffe reveals, they have many evolutionary motives for manipulating their host's behavior. Far more often than appreciated, these puppeteers orchestrate the interplay between predator and prey. With astonishing precision, parasites can coax rats to approach cats, spiders to transform the patterns of their webs, and fish to draw the attention of birds that then swoop down to feast on them.

We humans are hardly immune to the profound influence of parasites. Organisms we pick up from our own pets are strongly suspected of changing our personality traits and contributing to recklessness, impulsivity - even suicide. Microbes in our gut affect our emotions and the very wiring of our brains. Germs that cause colds and flu may alter our behavior even before symptoms become apparent.

Parasites influence our species on the cultural level, too. As McAuliffe documents, a subconscious fear of contagion impacts virtually every aspect of our lives, from our sexual attractions and social circles to our morals and political views. Drawing on a huge body of research, she argues that our dread of contamination is an evolved defense against parasites - and a double-edged sword. The horror and revulsion we feel when we come in contact with people who appear diseased or dirty helped pave the way for civilization but may also be the basis for major divisions in societies that persist to this day.

In the tradition of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel and Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish, This Is Your Brain on Parasites is both a journey into cutting-edge science and a revelatory examination of what it means to be human.

©2016 Kathleen McAuliffe (P)2016 Audible, Inc.

interesting pop overview, derails at end

nice popular overview at beginning that gets too general, moralistic, dull, and political at end.

I am beside myself and can’t tell which is me!

For me this book opened new vistas in a delightfully nonlinear way. Reductionism played no role in the ideas, presentation or conclusions, yet everything was clear: we are not machines!

Fantastic!

Wow so interesting and thought provoking! It delves way deeper then I anticipated into the impact of parasites on our psychology and society and basically everything we do! You won't regret choosing it.

Much more than I ever expected.

I thought this book would look only at parasites, but it looked at the world, cultures, and individual behaviors through the lense of parasites, bateria, and viruses.

An amazing treatise on the myriad ways of parasites

I had started this book several times but seldom got past the first chapter. As a Christian I had issues with the constant reference to evolutionary biology. However, after I resolved not to let that word bother me, I found the book unusually insightful. Indeed, I learned things that had never occurred to me regarding the relationship between the parasitic organism and the particular host.

To my Christian brethren, let me say that while I strongly regard evolution theory as utter foolishness, it can be profitable to ignore that nonsense and glean knowledge that would otherwise remain obscure if we simply reject out of hand any work containing references to evolution. Brethren, we can and should learn wonderful things about our world while keeping the faith that guards our hearts from deception. Consider this in prayerful meditation.