>>56063
Good god.
I don't mean anything personally against you, but I've heard this toxoplasmosis theory so many times over the years and it frustrates me to no end.
Before I pop off, I would like to agree on a few points. Yes, it's true that there is evidence that toxoplasmosis does affect humans psychologically aside from making them sick. Of course, as the other anon pointed out, if there is enough toxoplasmosis bacteria in your blood to cause an effect on your psyche, there would certainly be enough of it to cause other symptoms of parasitic infection that would show up on blood tests.
Nonetheless, let's still entertain the idea regardless.
My primary issue with this theory is that while it seems like a quick and easy explanation for an outwardly weird fetish, since "Mice and humans are both mammals! The toxoplasmosis makes mice *want* to be eaten by cats, kind of, I think... Uhm, anyway! Since it makes mice *want to be eaten by cats*, it can also make humans want to be eaten too! It makes so much sense!", this very conclusion shows that the claimant has only a very surface level understanding of how parasites or neurotransmitters work. I'm sorry, and I mean no disrespect to you personally, but the whole argument is just really dumb and makes it really obvious that the claimant is more concerned with finding an easy explanation (read cope) rather than actually looking at the facts.
I realize that you could accuse me of straw-manning, and to be honest, I admit that I kind of am. Keep in mind, however, that I've heard this rhetoric being spouted by every third person whenever anyone wonders about where vore as a fetish might have come from.
Moving on, yes, the toxoplasmosis makes mice behave in a way that makes them more likely to get caught and thus eaten by cats, but as impressive as the evolutionary adaptation is it doesn't just magically "no longer afraid of cats" specifically, much less "attracted to them." The way that the parasite affects mice is by removing their natural inhibitions and just blocking their fear instincts, slowing their reaction time and making them less averse to cats, as well as boosting their testosterone, which makes them more cocky and less likely to back away. In essence, a mouse on toxoplasmosis is not that different to my buddy Blake who had a few too many Jager bombs one evening and started challenging passing cops to fistfights.
With a single google search, you'll find that toxoplasmosis doesn't make mice less afraid of cats, but rather just less afraid of stuff in general. Granted, there is a study (
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3210761/) that posits that the cognitive effects of the toxoplasma can in fact make the host less aversive to the smell of cat urine when compared to the urine of other animals. (They also found that the same effect is absent when it comes to the urine of big cats like tigers, which is another point against your theory.) But still, this doesn't mean that the mice somehow fall in love and seek out cats specifically. I don't know how much experience you have with different animals, so this might come as a surprise, but for pretty much most animals in existence, their urine fucking reeks, since that's kind of one of the functions of urine for a great deal of animals. Nonetheless, though being less averse to the scent of cat urine does mean that the mice are more likely to get eaten, they don't so much get a death wish of being devoured by the cute cat that lives down the alley as they are just hopped up on testosterone and too brain damaged to realize they're in any danger before it's too late.
Something that's also pretty interesting in this study is that among those affected by the toxoplasma, the infected men found cat urine to be more pleasant than the non-infected men, but among the women the opposite was true, with infected women being more aversive to the same samples than non-infected women. There were also other behavioral differences between the infected men and women, with infected men being more impulsive and more likely to take risks and took worse care of themselves than the control group while the infected women were instead more cautious and were more careful about their appearance than their respective control group, but whose are explained away by other societal and evolutionary factors that I won't really get into. (TLDR toxo messes with the brain which leads to chronic stress, which affects men and women differently long-term). Regardless, though the study specifies that such a distinction has yet to be observed in mice, and that there's not enough data to say anything conclusive regarding this split, there is still non-insignificant statistical evidence that (at least in human subjects), toxoplasmosis might indeed affect men more than it does women.
I have to admit that despite my seething hatred for this whole "vore is from toxoplasmo because mouse get eaten lol!" hypothesis, as I read through that part, a small part of me wondered if perhaps there may be some truth to the whole toxoplasmosis theory after all, since if you fudge the numbers a little, you could potentially twist the findings to mean that human males exhibit the same behaviors that get mice eaten more frequently, and if you're really lenient with that conclusion, I can see how it could add credence to the toxoplasmosis hypothesis about vore. Of course such a conclusion is still extremely tenuous, since as I mentioned before, aside from the already low evidence, the risk taking behavior is most likely caused by the chronic stress rather than direct changes to behavior.
Nonetheless, let's give you the benefit of the doubt. Let's be extremely generous and lenient with the actual findings and assume that toxoplasmosis really does affect humans directly and that these effects present in the same way that they do in mice. Great! Now, humans affected with toxoplasmosis are significantly less aversive to the smell of cat urine, and aren't afraid of cats anymore!
What now?
If you really think about it, cats can be terrifying. They've technically never been domesticated like dogs or livestock have been since aside from a few rare breeds cats lack floppy ears. They have really sharp claws, pretty strong fangs, and in all regards they're apex predators. The only reason that they're such common pets is because cats just so happen to integrate well into life with humans, especially in more densely populated areas, and they're too small to be a real threat (though they can be surprisingly strong for their size). Assuming the above, humans affected by toxoplasma bacteria would be less aversive to cats, and would perceive them as less of a threat, but the question remains: What now?
Even with all the afforded lenience, this fails to establish any link with vore fetishisms at all. Your theory about many preds being depicted in an anime-like style which gives them cat-like features, which in term makes them more appealing as preds is cute, but it completely falls through once you realize that this only applies to furries. While many furries are into vore, far from all people that are into vore are furries.
Moreover, 'vore' as a term in itself is more of an umbrella that encompasses several related kinks and fetishes rather than being a single thing like feet. Yes, all of these things are related by having something to do with x being eaten or otherwise consumed by y, but there is a ton of variability, and for many including myself, the "eating" element alone is rarely enough to satisfy this craving without other factors, all of which vary widely. Hell, maybe for some people that are exclusively attracted to vore content featuring cat-like preds toxoplasmosis may actually be the reason for their preference, but aside from being extremely unlikely due to my next point which I will bring up shortly, that still fails to account for the wider population of people with this fetish.
As teased above, this theory has another fatal flaw, and that is the fact that toxoplasmosis as an illness presents itself very clearly. Unlike stuff like mono or chlamydia, you can't really have toxoplasmosis without noticing it. You can't catch it from some random cat and have it be severe enough to have any kind of effect, then go on living your life as normal but now suddenly attracted to women swallowing other people whole. Toxoplasmosis is a diagnosable condition with distinct symptoms. Yes, it does in fact affect the brain, but instead of making someone suddenly develop a niche fetish, it makes them suicidal, depressed and unable to concentrate. While toxo can be asymptomatic, that's because your immune system kills it before it can do any harm, but even then, there is a distinct immune response that appears in blood tests even if you're absolutely normal otherwise.
Lastly, your argument fails on a purely statistical basis. As you said yourself, there are populations where up to 50% of people are infected, which means that it's far from rare at all. You would think that if a vore fetish is caused by a disease that has is and has been so prevalent in humans, that it would have had more of a presence in art, and wouldn't be such a rare thing. For comparison, the number of people that have a foot fetish is about 30%, and though it's recognized as being somewhat niche, it's still widely known about. Even before the times of widespread sexual acceptance, there is telltale evidence of people throughout history being into feet. By your logic, there should be historical records of whole cultures recognizing vore as potentially sexual, yet aside from a very few limited examples where the intent behind its inclusion is unclear, this doesn't exist.
TL;DR, The toxoplasmosis hypothesis is retarded and lazy, and you are a retard for believing it.