What was the first parasite in history?
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The oldest parasites in the shell of an ancient creature
From a scientific point of view, parasites are creatures that invade other organisms and use their life force for their own survival. These include fleas and lice, which live on the bodies of hosts and suck their blood. Also have roundworms, which can be picked up by eating raw meat — they will live in the digestive system to take nutrients and grow to enormous size. Today science knows a huge number of parasites, but when they emerged on our planet and what first came up to live the kind of life, scientists are still not clear. Fortunately, thanks to the hard work of Chinese scientists, the shroud of mystery is slowly beginning to appear.
What is parasitism?
Recently, research published an article that describes one of the first in the history of the acts of parasitism. This term is commonly understood as a phenomenon when the body uses someone else's body to sustain his life. It's kind of symbiosis, however, creatures do not get the mutual benefit in parasitism, only one organism benefits and develops, while another feels the lack of nutrients and gradually weakened.
human Parasites
Is Inside a person can also live parasites, and one of the most famous is the beef tapeworm (Taenia saginata). This worm can enter the body from poorly treated meat animals and subsequently the whole body to absorb the incoming human nutrients. Adult length bovine tapeworm can reach 10 meters. During the stay of the parasite in the digestive system, in humans there is a disease beef tapeworm infection. Its symptoms are pain in the abdomen, feeling of loose inside, nausea, headache, and frequent feeling of hunger. The man is clearly not enough nutrients, because most of it takes the parasite.
beef tapeworm in the flask.
First parasite
Fleas, lice and roundworms is a modern parasites. It is logical to assume that they had an ancestor that invented the lead a parasitic way of life. Most likely, it was some kind of tiny worm in what lies the main difficulty in its detection. The fact that worms have no skeleton and other relatively hard body parts, so their time has not spared their remains to our days is simply not preserved.
The Remains have not survived, but who said that ancient parasites are unable to leave behind traces? Recently, Chinese scientists managed to find the remains of ancient invertebrate creatures known as brachiopods (Neobolus wulongqingensis). They are also known as brachiopods and resemble shellfish and their habitat are cold water. Today they are rarely where you meet, but millions of years ago, they were almost at every step.
it looks like an ancient shell with traces of vermin
The Brachiopods were attached and secured to the bottom by means of a special blade of grass — all this is clearly shown in the video below. On fossil remains, scientists have found traces of the parasites that were attached to the shells and blatantly steal the brachiopods nutrients. Researchers believe that the infected organisms were lacking these substances and could not grow to large sizes. Healthy organisms develop normally. Signs of parasitism are obvious.
It is believed that one of the first parasites lived about 540 million years ago — scientists came to this conclusion based on the age of the fossil remains of sea. We can say that parasitism arose in the Cambrian period, during which began to appear in the modern group of animals. About this important moment in the history of life on Earth a few years ago, wrote my colleague Ilya Hel — reading.
Perhaps leaving behind traces of parasites — not the first who invented so depressing victims way of life. It's clear that parasitism as a phenomenon has greatly affected the evolution of living creatures. It is a kind of butterfly effect — if once upon a time the parasites do not interfere with living creatures to evolve, evolution would have proceeded in a very different manner and the present animals would have looked not like now.
Parasites are able to exploit almost any creature. On this topic I recommend to read the article, which was written by Love Sokovikova — she told . Turned out very interestingly!
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