‘Save the parasites’ may not be a popular rallying cry – but it could be a vital one

Parasites can be hard to love. The very word likely summons thoughts of disease, death and just plain icky imagery of one creature invading the body of another. However, as researchers in this video from Scientific American argue, with up to one in three parasites at risk of extinction, we may want to start to seriously consider which parasites may be worth saving – or, at the very least, gather as much data on these diverse organisms as possible. Paying visits to the National Parasite Collection at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and the research labs of Georgetown University, both in Washington, DC, the film highlights an ongoing project to map the world of parasitism, which may well be one of biology’s least explored and most important frontiers.