What’s more, female rats are far more receptive to copulating with infected males. “It’s a very strong effect,” Ajai Vyas, Sapolsky’s postdoc at the time of the discovery, told me. “Seventy-five percent of the females would rather spend time with the infected male.” The parasite also invades the male’s sperm so when he copulates with a female, it can infect her pups, creating still more vehicles for transporting T. gondii back into the belly of a cat.
