how come ‘zombie’ parasites are able to infect species like snails but not humans?
In: Biology
These parasites have evolved very specific genes to be able to carry out their pretty complicated infection. Most zombie parasites tend to stick to one specific organism that they infect (or multiple closely related species), as it keeps their evolution more simple and keeps their genome smaller. The fact that we haven’t observed any ‘zombie’ parasites that infect humans and most higher animals probably means that infecting us isn’t a viable strategy for them to be successful parasites, so they stick to insects and fish. The closest thing to a zombie parasite for humans is rabies, or lyssavirus. It is however not a parasite but a virus.
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