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I thought the official definition of a parasite was an organism that benefits itself at the expense of the host? If the host gains from the relationship it woul
by dawg- 7y ago
I thought the official definition of a parasite was an organism that benefits itself at the expense of the host? If the host gains from the relationship it would be called something else entirely. In that case, I think your statement that half of life on the planet are parasites is not really accurate...
- pvaldes 7y agoThe real number is unknown, because parasites are shared often among different hosts, but could be much higher in fact. Each species of free living animal known have at least one parasite, hosting 20 different species is not uncommon. Humans have several thousands just in the Platyhelminths group. Each plant known have at least two or three parasitic fungus. All known viruses except virulent bacteriophages are parasites, and is expected that most unknown viruses will be parasites also (we only had studied a small percentage of the extant viruses and there are serious estimates that calculate over 100 millions). Many bacterias also are parasites. Lots of fungus are parasites of animals also. And parasites have its own parasites.