how come ‘zombie’ parasites are able to infect species like snails but not humans?
In: Biology
Because a snail is a much simpler life form than a human. We have so many complex systems that constantly interact to give us life.
Humans DO get parasites, but you’ll see that they usually only affect one part of our life. A stomach bug, for example. It’s really good at attacking that ONE area of our complex biological system, but it can’t fully control us. Our brain is the area that a virus would successfully target for something like “zombification”, and there ARE plenty of Neuroparasites out there (Neuro-parasitology is a fascinating area of study, if you’re interested)
I’d certainly imagine that some virus or bacterium could evolve in a way to harm us further than just one of our systems, but it hasn’t happened yet. Kuru is another great research area for this, but that isn’t a parasite, just folded proteins, which somehow affect us even stronger than a parasite could.
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