[holub008]

How about correlation between attractiveness and owning cats? Attractiveness and having a larger number of partners, which increases odds of exposure to cats / T. Gondii? These hypotheses seem plausible enough that I believe the authors are wrong in claiming causality.

[hunterb123]

Unless people are hooking up in barns I don't think frequenting partners that own cats would be correlated. House cats generally eat kibble, not infected mice.

Even then you'd have to infect yourself with the cat while getting together, as humans don't transfer to each other.

Personally I don't think there's any causation here at all with attractiveness directly.

It may be correlated with more outdoorsy people, those people are probably more attractive on average.

[jjj123]

I don’t understand why you keep mentioning hooking up, that seems irrelevant since it’s been clarified this is not an STD. The parent comment was saying people who own cats could be more attractive on average, and people who own cats are more likely to get toxoplasmosis.

[holub008]

I wasn't implying infection was occurring during sex, but rather by being in the environment (many people stay around partners for more than sex).

[eurasiantiger]

Just want to note that kibble is not the best of foods for cats, especially not as the only food: it tends to cause urinary blockages which are a veterinary emergency.

[8note]

Mice can pretty easily show up indoors