Final answer:
Toxoplasma gondii is an intracellular parasite that reproduces asexually. Its complex life cycle involves infecting intermediate hosts, such as birds and rodents, through contaminated oocysts. T. gondii also has the ability to modify the behavior of its intermediate hosts.
Step-by-step explanation:
The complicated lifestyle of Toxoplasma gondii (toxo) is that it is an intracellular parasite, asexual. This means that it lives inside host cells and reproduces asexually within these cells. T. gondii can infect a wide variety of organisms, including humans, and has a complex life cycle involving multiple hosts.
When unsporulated oocysts are shed in a cat's feces, they become infective after sporulation. These infective oocysts can spread to intermediate hosts, such as birds and rodents, when they ingest contaminated soil, water, or plant material. The oocysts then transform into tachyzoites and develop into tissue cysts in the neural and muscle tissue of the intermediate hosts. Cats can become infected by consuming birds and rodents, or directly by ingesting sporulated oocysts. Interestingly, T. gondii infection can modify the behavior of its intermediate hosts, such as mice becoming less fearful of cat pheromones, which increases the chance of transmission to the cat definitive host.