• Question: What are parasites?

    Asked by popcorn32 to Divya on 8 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Divya Venkatesh

      Divya Venkatesh answered on 8 Mar 2014:

      A parasite is something that lives on or inside another organism – called the host – from which it takes all the food and the shelter it needs. The host usually loses out and can also die because of the parasite.

      Parasites can be big and visible, like the hookworm () which looks quite scary. But they can also be tiny like the trypanosomes I study ( – seen here among red blood cells)

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