Parasites are our friends, so we need to help save them

Save the tapeworm!

Because the only thing better than a site is a parasite(s).

Get it? That's one of the ideas in my latest marketing plan: Improving the image of the lowly parasite with clever marketing.

Yes, parasites: Tapeworms. Hookworms. Bed bugs. Tsetse flies. Lice.

Maybe a T-shirt that says, "Have a lice day!" Or a remake of the cheesy 1960s song, "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini," but as "Itsy Bitsy Tsetse Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini."

You know, something the kids will like. Because we need to help parasites. We need to raise their Q score. A movie called "Parasite" winning the Academy Award for best picture in 2019 was the first step, but we need more.

"Parasites have a major public relations problem," says Chelsea Wood, assistant professor at the University of Washington's School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences in an article on NPR's website.

Here's why: Parasites make up about 40 percent of animal species in the world., but as much as 10 percent of parasites might go extinct in the next 50 years, due to loss of habitat.

Yet nobody cares.

Save the whale? How about save the lice? Or the Nematomorpha, also known as a hairworm. A hairworm is the parasite that controls the brain of a cricket.

"When they're in the cricket, they manipulate the cricket's behavior, making the cricket jump into water, basically committing cricket suicide," Skylar Hopkins, assistant professor of applied ecology at North Carolina State University, told a reporter for NPR. The article continues to inform us that "once in the water, the shockingly long hairworm bursts out of the cricket to complete its life cycle."

Kind of magical, right? If you can get past the idea of something called the hairworm, it being "shockingly long" and that it controlled a cricket's mind.

The thing about parasites is that we don't even know most of them. The NPR article said that scientists have identified only about 10 percent of parasites in the world, which allows 90 percent of the parasitic world to avoid paying taxes and to "live off the grid," presumably.

Save the parasite.

Wouldn't it be sad to lose a huge percentage of living animals without even knowing them?

I mean take the scabies. Or the lung fluke. For every species of them, there could be nine other species that we haven't identified. And one-tenth of them could go extinct by 2070.

A team of scientists have created a global parasite conservation plan, which is akin to the efforts to preserve the bald eagle and save the whale. Except it's for worms and other parasites. (By the way, they don't include parasites who harm humans, so put away the torches and pitchforks.)

Parasites are often seen as living off others, but we overlook the fact that they contribute to circle of life. Without parasites, there would be much less biodiversity. And fewer nightmares about tapeworms.

And how would a world without parasites look?

"Conservation often talks about this metaphor: If you pull the nails out of the side of an airplane one by one, how many can you take out before the plane can't fly?"  Colin Carlson, assistant professor and biologist at Georgetown University, told NPR. "And we're looking at that with parasites now. If we see the total collapse of parasitic ecosystems, we have no idea what that's going to do."

But we know it will change things. We need to save the parasite.

If you agree, consider posting the link to this column to your favorite website. Or, to be more effective post it to a parasites.

See? Parasites are fun! Let's save them.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.