Toxoplasma in the News

Posted on by scott

For all you Peeps fans, the NY Times has a big article on Toxoplasma today. (That’s the cat-loving parasite in chapter 4 that changes rat and—possibly—human behavior.)

Best of all, the piece is written by Carl Zimmer, the author of Parasite Rex, the book that the non-fiction parasite chapters of Peeps are based on. It includes this memorable paragraph:

Next, the scientists observed how Toxoplasma spread through a living animal. They added a firefly gene to the parasites so that they produced a glow. When they injected the parasites into mice, a little of the light escaped from the animals. By putting the mice in a darkened box, Dr. Barragan and his colleagues could track the parasites as they spread . . .

Kewl. Glowing infected mice of the world, unite!

In honor of this event, I am posting the new paperback Peeps cover, in all its peep-eyed goodness:

Revealed at last, the source of new header for my blog! (Don’t you think that “Cal” looks a bit like a young Ewan McGregor?)

For more biological degustations, check out Carl Zimmer’s blog.

41 thoughts on “Toxoplasma in the News”

  1. Yay! 1st to post! anyways, love the new cover, and yes the eyes are definately very cool..and i wonder if us humans could glow like the mice.. hmmm….??

  3. i think i would like to see these glowing mice. fun stuff! 😉 and thank you thank you thank you for posting the new cover! it makes me even *more* excited to see the cover for the last days…but i can be patient. especially since i’m reading magic lessons, and also posting on westerboard.

    summer is fun.

  5. Awesome cover. Awesome enough to tempt me into buying the paperback copy…though I have the hardback one.

  7. Sooooo the girls…their lips are very red but their eyes are cool. But which girl is which?

  13. I want a glowing mouse! How cool would that be? :]

    The new cover of peeps is pretty cool. I like it more then the eye from before. But it is has this really pink-ish overtone to it. For some reason, Peeps just doesn’t seem like a pink-cover book to me. But it’s cool!! I wonder what the cover of The Last Days looks like…

  15. orangedragonfly, ok ill read peeps next when i finish uglies again i was re-reading them…

    does the glowing sutff in the mice hurt them? if not..i want one!!! lol

  16. u guys.. glowing mice r fun, but i wanna be teh glowing thing.. imagine lying in bet and be like shining!!! and hm.. i sort of did like the green letters better, but it does match with the lips…

  17. “it is has this really pink-ish overtone to it. For some reason, Peeps just doesn’t seem like a pink-cover book to me”

    Yeah, I agree. But then, I am biased, as I do not like pink at all. However, I love the rest of it. Argh, to buy or not to buy? That is the question.

  18. I can’t find that Australian cover of Peeps to save my life. Grrr. I wanna see.

    It occured to me that maybe the pink is to match the So Yesterday cover, which also had pink lettering.

  19. you just want to see the aussie peeps cover? look in the blog archives, november 6, 2005. it’s amazing!!

  21. I love the cover… minus the lettering… a bit too bold for me… Btw I was on vacation recently in the midst of a tropical storm thus playing many board games as well was reading the Uglies trilogy over again… While playing the new and improved rack-o, I learned that triskaidekaphobia is the fear of the number 13… I’m sure you ran across that quite a bit in your research, but I thought it was interesting…

  23. Scott sorry to be posting this here but i would appreciate it if you checked your emails i sent you 2 very important emails. Please get back to me soon, if you can.

  26. Cool. I like the cover. It has the same font as a lot of your other books. Do you know what that font’s called? I’m curious.

  29. Next school year, I’m going to have to spend quite a bit of time writing a 14-20 page research paper on a slightly controversial topic… I would really love to write about toxoplasma gondii… Do you know of any good sources for information on that?

  33. wow!!! nice cover. love it. it really makes you want to read it. don’t you think that the girls look a little…fake?? i mean witha all of that color- the red lipstik and the creepy eyes. yet, somehow it all works out. wierd. i read the book, it was awsome.

    ROCK ON DUDE!!! lol

    😉

  35. sorry this is extremely off topic, but scott its over halfway through june and u said you would prolly give us the big news this month, dont forget! ^.^

  38. hey! don’t diss his eye-obsession
    ‘i have it too, i think it might b contagious!!!
    i think it woudl b awesome if we could all like buy cat-eye contacts.. like a huge movement to support peeps or something, lol
    nvm
    too wack, but it would be cool

  39. Aww man, just when I decide to crack and buy Peeps in hardcover when I see it in a store, the paperback comes out looking even cooler! You’re killing me, Scott. =)
    Ah well, it’s very awesome, maybe I’ll buy it anyway just for the collection.

  40. Oh and I love the large pink-ish writing of the title. I’m a bit of a fan of pink. *chuckle*

  41. I need ot go but it just so Peeps and Last Days will match! The cover is different from the header, Cal’s eye is brown in the header and black on the cover.

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