Comment by tgv

I don't see anything in that article that makes the conclusion inevitable. It's a remarkable correlation for sure, but unfortunately it doesn't go beyond that. There's no pathway from infection to leadership (just a vague hypothesis that doesn't resemble the mechanism in rats and hyenas), and it doesn't look as if they looked at uninfected pack leaders. Perhaps pack leaders or strays eat more dead cat, or some other intermediate host of T.gondii. Perhaps they sampled in the wrong time frame. The full article might have more info, but the linked one doesn't.