Question: Hi everyone... I just want to know - how many parasites are there in the WHOLE world? Because it seems there are just sooo many...they are also scary and pretty gross...!

Hi leelee1997

there ARE hundreds and hundreds of parasites in the world but only some of them are dangerous or scary. (although quite a few are pretty gross… you are right!)

The definition of a parasite is something that lives off something else to stay alive. But the BEST parasites are the ones that can do this WITHOUT killing the thing it’s living off (the host).

Also, we can use some gross things to our benefit – like maggots (eew) did you know that they are used to clean nasty flesh infections in medicine (even today!?) they are useful because they can tell much better than we can what part of the skin is dead and what part is alive!

Yuk