• Question: how do parasites work?

    Asked by #Asia_ali to Mark, Koi on 14 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Mark Booth

      Mark Booth answered on 14 Jun 2016:

      Hi Asia

      Parasite work in different ways depending on their life cycle. Malaria is injected by mosquitoes and take over red blood cells to help them grow and replicate. Schistosome worms swim from snails to humans, attracted by chemicals released from the skin, penetrate the skin then get carried around the body. They mate and produce millions of eggs over the next decade which are then released into the gut or bladder of the host. Ascaris eggs are in soil and are ingested accidentally. When they get into the gut they mate and produce millions of eggs which are then excreted.

      This is a very big question that many research scientists have spent many years trying to answer. If you read a book called ‘parasite rex’ you will find out a lot more.

    • Photo: Arporn Wangwiwatsin

      Arporn Wangwiwatsin answered on 15 Jun 2016:

      Hi Asia_ali,
      Nice one! There are many different types of parasites, and at a big picture, all life styles of the parasites take advantages of their host in some way, and at the same time saving themselves from being get rid of. But if we look in details for each of them they use different ways to live and infect the next host.. Some parasites use pretend that they are part of our body so our immune system do not detect them (e.g. Schistosome); some of them just race against our immune system by producing more and more of the parasites that our immune system and our body get depleted trying to catch up (e.g. Trypanosome); some might secrete molecules into body of their host to control how the body react to the presence of the parasites (e.g. many…!).

      That, I was talking about parasites that live in body though. There are also parasites in the wild, like some birds are parasites and some trees are parasites too, some fungal are parasites also. They will have their own way of living but the core of their life style is to living at the expense of other living things.

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