• Question: What is a parasite

    Asked by 627parf36 to Claire on 20 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Claire Bourke

      Claire Bourke answered on 20 Jun 2016:


      a parasite is a living organism that uses the resources of another living organism (called the ‘host’), without providing any benefit to the host. The word ‘parasite’ means ‘to eat at another’s table’, so parasites are a bit like an uninvited dinner guest! They come in many shapes and sizes, from tape worms that can be over a metre long living in the gut, to single-celled parasites like Plasmodium (which cause malaria and live inside red blood cells) and Leishmania (which cause a disease called leishmaniasis and live inside immune cells called macrophages), and even biting insects that live outside the body, but feed on the blood of their hosts like mosquitoes, sandflies, blackflies, kissing bugs, leeches and ticks.

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