Well, that was the way it sounded to me, anyway. This was right before I was to start as a physics graduate student at the University of Chicago. I had come back from my year in England in mid-August, and I was hanging out with my fiance and his posse over in the math department before courses got going. That was when someone mentioned a book titled Essential Elements of Algebraic Geometry. But the title I thought I heard sounds much more interesting, does it not?

Of course, even then I didn’t believe that I’d really heard right. Abstract mathematics and the world of the senses don’t intersect in the popular imagination—or even in my not-so-popular imagination. (It’s been almost twenty years since I read it, but the novel The Mind-Body Problem by Rebecca Goldstein does bring together math and sex quite well, as I recall. And then there is the nonfiction book Mathematics and Sex by Clio Creswell, but although it’s a little cheeky, the treatment is as matter-of-fact as the title. Those looking for, ahem, optimal oscillation frequencies here will be disappointed.)

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OK, this is just weird. A ridiculously common parasite can change people’s behavior, making us dumber and more sexy, says infectious disease researcher Nicky Boulter with the Sydney University of Technology. The toxoplasma gondii parasite can only sexually reproduce in cats, but it can live in other creatures, including rats and humans. The parasite changes rats’ behaviors, making them less fearful of cats. This makes the rodents easier prey for the cats, and makes it possible for the parasite to sexually reproduce inside its new feline hosts.

But toxoplasmosis may have much the same impact on humans, Boulter says. Weirdly, she says the effects depend on the host’s gender. “In short, it can make men behave like alley cats and women like sex kittens.” Or, more precisely:

Infected men have lower IQs, achieve a lower level of education and have shorter attention spans. They are also more likely to break rules and take risks, be more independent, more anti-social, suspicious, jealous and morose, and are deemed less attractive to women.

On the other hand, infected women tend to be more outgoing, friendly, more promiscuous, and are considered more attractive to men compared with non-infected controls.

There’s evidence that this parasite has a role in schizphenia, according to the source of all lies. Humans get it from eating undercooked meat that has the eggs, or by accidentally ingesting cat shit.

The really scary statistic is that 33.1 percent of Americans have antibodies for toxoplasmosis — and the parasite never really goes away, even with antibiotics. So up to a third of the U.S. population could be dumber and sexier thanks to a catshit-traveling parasite. France has an estimated rate of infection of between 45 and 88 percent (steak tartare?) and Brazil’s infection rate is estimated at 66.9 percent. By contrast, only 4.3 percent of South Koreans have the parasite.

But press reports about the wacky behavior of people with the parasite may be overstated, an Oxford biologist told the UK Guardian in 2003:

“We don’t want people to go into a panic and think they’re going to behave really strangely, because the problem is once we’ve got it we’ve got it for life,” says Joanne Webster, a biologist at the University of Oxford who studies the parasite. “And in the vast majority, 99% of people or above, the results will be very subtle.” For those that are interested, a simple blood test for antibodies raised against the parasite can tell you whether you’re infected or not.