Toxoplasmosis and World Cup Glory

In the past LitFL has looked at the horrendous parasites that afflict our various animal kingdom brethren and breathed a sigh of relief. However, we were falsely reassured, as it turns out that we have potentially zombifying parasites of our own – not least that thief of Free Will we call toxoplasmosis.

Yet it turns out that toxoplasmosis may play a bigger role in world affairs than just making young men crash motorcycles. The parasite may even determine who wins the football World Cup:

“If we set aside the qualifying rounds (in which teams can play to a draw) and focus on matches with a clear winner, the results are very compelling. In the knockout round of this year’s tournament, eight out of eight winners so far have been the teams whose countries had higher rates of Toxo infection. If we go back to the 2006 World Cup, seven out of eight knockout-round winners could be predicted by higher Toxo rates. The one exception to the rule was Brazil’s defeat of Ghana, a match between two nations that each have very high rates. (Aside from having the winningest team in World Cup history, Brazil has quite a few cases of Toxo: Two out of three Brazilians are infected.)”
— from ‘Landon Donovan needs a cat’ by Patrick House in Slate magazine.

Read the rest of ‘Landon Donovan needs a cat’ here — though I suspect the Dutch may have just upset the applecart…