The Mind-Controlling Cat Parasite Has Been Found in Arctic Beluga Whales

The mind-controlling cat parasite Toxoplasma gondii is now also a beluga whale parasite, after researchers in Canada have found it in the hearts and diaphragms of the Arctic sea dwellers.

Finding Toxoplasma in whales is bad news on all sorts of fronts. First, it's an example of a disease that was once found only in temperate environments making its way to an Arctic climate. Second, it's an example of a disease jumping from a terrestrial mammal to an ocean-dwelling one, and finally, it represents a major health concern for Inuit people who rely on the beluga for meat.

The team of University of British Columbia researchers who made the discovery presented their research at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting, which is currently ongoing.

How Toxoplasma made the jump to beluga is a bit of a mystery, the “magic question,” according to Michael Griggs of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. But we do know that the disease is generally transmitted through cat feces or by eating infected animals. The parasite’s oocysts—or eggs—are extremely hearty and nearly impossible to destroy.

“They can remain in an environment for up to five years and still be infectious as long as they don’t freeze. You can put them in salt water, you can put them in straight bleach if you want but that only makes them more infectious,” Griggs told me.

In case you’re just catching up on this disease, it’s most commonly found in house cats, and can be passed from house cats to people via infected feces. In humans (about a third of Americans have it), the parasite is largely benign, but has been known to cause blindness and pregnancy problems, but it also may cause slower reaction times, impulsive behavior, depression, and potentially even brain cancer. It’s called the mind-controlling disease because it makes its way to cats by first infecting rodents, who are then compelled to seek out cat urine, which is a really good place to be eaten by a cat. And now, it’s in whales.

Griggs and his colleague, Stephen Raverty of the British Columbia Ministry of Agriculture and Lands, say they’ve been monitoring beluga whales for toxoplasmosis since 2002, but nothing showed up until they took tissue samples from beluga killed by Inuits in 2009. They blame, in part, climate change.

“We were waiting to see if the parasite emerged up north,” Griggs said. “If you have prolonged summers where temperatures are above freezing, you can have diseases that are normally contained by ecological barriers that are then able to invade.”

They had feared the disease might show up in the species because it has been found in seals along the American west coast for years now. The disease may have been passed to beluga who ventured south and ate an infected seal, or it could have been infected by housecats in the Arctic, which are becoming more popular among Inuit people.

Either way, the parasite has found its way into 14 percent of the beluga population they sampled, and has been observed in the hearts and diaphragms of the whales. It’s unclear if the parasite has the same mind-controlling potential in beluga, and Raverty says that the team is still trying to figure out what symptoms, if any, the parasite will bring out in beluga.

“In combination with other infectious diseases or other stressors like increased human activity and shipping, you have a multifactorial scenario where the beluga could be at risk,” Raverty said.