Animals P by: Geoffrey LaPage Published by ... - PSSurvival.com

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Animals Payasitic i?t Man
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see lifti as it is. If we do this; we see the parasites, not as disgusting
or despicable creatures, nor even, if we c.an be sufficient?‘y
dispassionate, as creatures that do man, and other
for& of life, a great deal of harm, but simply as creatures that
use, / in the fascinating maze of ways of living, a particular
me&od of getting that basic necessity that all living things
m+rst get, namely, their food.
How do parasites get their food ? By considering this we
&all arrive, by a process of exclusion, at a definition of a para-
$te. It will not be, it cannot be, the clear-cut definition, free
r’ from all qualification& that human thinkers so often vainly
,/ seek; for life is not static, nor fixed in process or form; it is
/ fluid, dynamic, alwgys subjept to continuous change. It cannot,
therefore, be neatly pigeon -?2~d and classified: we can-
not put, so to spe!k, a i%: CerTi of compartments over living
things and, labell’mg one for parasites, put all our parasites
neatly into that.!We shall find, indeed, that, although many
parasites can be’s0 separated off, there will always be many
which will notfit into our pigeon-hole; these will belong to
more than one of our human categories. They link the parasite
to the creatures that live in other ways; and, because
they do this;’ they often show us how the parasite has come,
in the passage of time since life on the earth began, to adopt
the mode /of life which is its mark and character. What is
this parasitic mode of life ? We shall understand it best if we
compareit with two other modes of life adopted by plants and
animals; namely the two modes of life called symbiosis and
commer~salism.
Sym$osis, commensalism, and parasitism are three of the
categobies into which the ecologist - the biologist who studie
the ways of life of living things and their relations to their e
vironkrents - divides what he calls associations of living thin
which live together for various reasons. These associati
may be formed between animals only, plants only, or ani
and/plants. They may be, as herds of cattle, flocks of she
th$ communities of ants, bees, and wasps or the co10
formed by corals are, associations between individuals b
ink to the same species; or they may be associations be
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