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Comment by jobigoud | Hacker News Reader

One thing about mind controlling parasites that's bugging me is that we only ever hear about the extreme cases when it's very visible because the host does something counter intuitive from an evolutionary point of view. But statistically there must be many more cases where the effect of the mind control is just partial, not evolutionary suicide or even beneficial.

How spread is this phenomenon really? How many generations does it take for a parasite to evolve into such spectacular effect? Where are the non spectacular mind controlling parasites and how are they influencing their host?

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It might not hit the news, but people are looking into things like how gut microbacteria might affect your brain and behaviour [1]. From what I can see it looks like it is more and more accepted that microorganisms affect us in many different ways.

[1] https://icds.uoregon.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/CryanDin...

I was going to mention sugar-loving fungi in our gut causing sugar cravings. Fascinating to think about next time my sweet tooth acts up.

I wonder what would happen if you made candy with some antifungal compound, maybe it would reduce the craving for sugar..

Xyletol sort of works that way, it looks like sugar to (at least some of) the micro-organisms that like sugar but contains nothing nutritious to them.

Not sure if one can separate the effect prolonged xyletol substitution has on the microbiome from the effect it has on the actual human portion of the metabolism, if one replaces any addiction with something else the original cravings will subside over time.

Is there a disease that makes us love cats - https://news.emory.edu/stories/2016/07/esc_loving_cats/campu...

There is a theory that colds and flu and many sexually transmitted diseases also affect behaviour enough to encourage more spread. In other words, it's possible that being infected with an STD makes you more sexually active.

It's a theory as it's incredibly hard to do studies about. The main study this was based on was done on people with the flu - they used students who had the flu jab (mild flu effects etc) - and saw that those students went out more and socialised. Subsequent studies think this might be because they felt more protected being jabbed, rather than the virus affecting their behaviour.

I read somewhere (from an Atlantic article several years ago) that soon before death, AIDs patients would feel a stronger desire to copulate.

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