• Question: can the parasite be a killer parasite?

    Asked by to Divya on 17 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Divya Venkatesh

      Divya Venkatesh answered on 17 Mar 2014:

      Yup. Parasites usually don’t go for the kill though. At least not too quickly, because they depend so much on the host. Some parts of the parasite’s life cycle happen in the host – they could lay eggs, multiply, or generally reproduce – so the host needs to be alive long enough to provide them to do that. Well-adapted parasites actually are not super-killer bugs that kill in a couple of days, it takes a a while – long enough for the next part of its life cycle to continue.

      For example, trypanosomes can stay in the human host for a long time before they enter the brain (at which point, if there’s no treatment the person will definitely die) – enough time for another ‘tse-tse fly’ to bite the person and pick up some trypanosomes to spread. (Just like mosquitoes spread the parasite that causes malaria, tse-tse flies spread sleeping sickness caused by trypanosomes).

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