Eli5: why do bacteriophages look like tiny robots?

Question

They look so surreal. Like they were build or sth. And they arent even alive.

In: 25

Answer 1

Here’s a secret: all organisms are basically tiny robots. Or quite big robots, as it turns out. You’re a robot too. It’s just more obvious on the scale of a virus because viruses are so small that you’re seeing individual proteins. You don’t get the smoothing out effect that comes with flexible cell membranes and scale. If you zoomed into a human far enough, you’d see the jagged robot-like inner workings of our cells too.