What was the very first parasite in history?

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What was the very first parasite in history?
What was the very first parasite in history?
Anonim

Scientifically speaking, parasites are creatures that invade alien organisms and use their vitality for their own survival. These include fleas and lice that live on the bodies of "hosts" and suck their blood. There are also roundworms that can be picked up by eating raw meat - they will live in the digestive system, take away nutrients and grow to enormous sizes over time. Today, science knows a huge number of parasites, but when exactly they appeared on our planet and what creatures were the first to come up with such a lifestyle, scientists are still not clear. Fortunately, thanks to the hard work of Chinese scientists, the veil of secrecy has slowly begun to be lifted.

What is parasitism?

Recently, the scientific journal Nature Communications published an article describing one of the first acts of parasitism in history. Under this term, it is customary to understand the phenomenon when the body uses someone else's body to maintain its life. This is a kind of symbiosis, however, the creatures do not receive mutual benefit - with parasitism, only one organism benefits and develops, while the other feels a lack of nutrients and gradually weakens.

Symbiosis is the interaction of two organisms that brings mutual benefit. For example, symbiosis can be called the cooperation of bees and plants, when insects pollinate flowers and help them reproduce, and flowers are a source of nutritious nectar for them.

Human parasites

Parasites can also live inside humans, and one of the most famous is the bovine tapeworm (Taenia saginata). This worm can enter the body with poorly processed animal meat and subsequently absorb the nutrients entering the person with the whole body. The length of an adult bovine tapeworm can reach 10 meters. During the stay of the parasite in the digestive system, a person develops the disease teniarinchiasis. Its symptoms are bouts of pain in the abdomen, a feeling of mobility inside, nausea, headache and frequent hunger. A person clearly lacks nutrients, because most of them are taken by the parasite.

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Bovine tapeworm in a flask

The first parasite

Fleas, lice and roundworms are modern parasites. It is logical to assume that they had an ancestor who invented to lead a parasitic lifestyle. Most likely, it was some kind of tiny worm, which is the main difficulty in detecting it. The fact is that the worms do not have a skeleton or other relatively rigid body parts, so time has not spared them and their remains have simply not survived to this day.

The remains have not survived, but who said that the ancient parasites could not leave traces of themselves? Recently, Chinese scientists managed to find the remains of ancient invertebrates, referred to as brachiopods (Neobolus wulongqingensis). They are also known as brachiopods and resemble molluscs in appearance and are found in cold waters. Today they can rarely be found anywhere, but millions of years ago they were almost at every step.

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It looks like an ancient shell with traces of parasites

Brachiopods were attached and attached to the bottom with a special stalk - all this is clearly shown in the video below. On the fossil remains, scientists found traces of parasites that attached themselves to shells and brazenly stole nutrients from brachiopods. The researchers believe that the infected organisms were deficient in these substances and could not grow to large sizes. Healthy organisms developed normally. There are signs of parasitism.

It is believed that some of the very first parasites lived about 540 million years ago - scientists came to this conclusion based on the age of the remains of the marine fossil. We can say that parasitism arose in the Cambrian period, during which modern groups of animals began to appear. Several years ago, my colleague Ilya Khel wrote about this important moment from the history of life on Earth - I recommend his article for reading.

Perhaps the parasites that left their traces are far from the first who came up with a way of life so oppressive to victims. It is only clear that parasitism as a phenomenon greatly influenced the evolution of living creatures. This is a kind of butterfly effect - if once upon a time parasites had not prevented living creatures from developing, evolution would have proceeded in a completely different way and today's animals would not look like they do now.

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