alien simbient creature

Star Trek, Star Gate, Dark Skies and last night's show on the Sci-Fi channel all dealt with some sort of alien parasite or simbient creature.

Is someone researching this? I'd like to know more about this subject.

I assume your talking about a symbiote. A truly symbiotic relationship is one where neither individual can survive without the other. A good Example would be leaf cutter ants. These ants farm vegitation, but not to eat. They shew it up and throw it on the pile of fungus that they grow inside their "hives". This fungus does not exist anywhere exept for leaf cutter ant hives, and the ants can not eat anything else.... So neither species could survive without the other.

True smbiotic relationships take thousands or millions of years to develop. It would be extremely unprobable for an Alien species to suddenly strike up a true symbiotic relationship with anything from Earth.

Now parasitic relationships are much different. (by the way in most tv series, movies, and comic books, they say symbiot when its Much closer to a parasite. example-Stargate and the Go-ould)
A parasitic relationship is one where one of the individuals recieves no benificial results. A tick or leech or my uncle Bob are great examples of parasites.

An alien species coming to earth would probably be some sort of parasite, if it has to be one or the other...

hope this helped

[edit on 31-7-2006 by Tiloke]

thanks Tiloke but no, that does not help me. I know what a simbiotic relationship is. The Remora and the Shark are another example.

I guess what I'm asking is why the alien creature living in a human host is such a recuring theme in stories about aliens, is there some bit of truth to it?

Originally posted by Stevo_Devo
I guess what I'm asking is why the alien creature living in a human host is such a recuring theme in stories about aliens, is there some bit of truth to it?

The truth is inside your head, the brain is one big parasite controlling your human body

Well, for one thing, commensalism, mutualism and parasitism are common enough themes in nature that we have neat terms for it.

Go'a'uld in the case of T'auri are actually facultative mutualisms on the human side. A human can survive without it, but with it has extended life span, a definite benefit. For a J'affa and a Go'a'uld, it's an obligate mutualism.

Mitochondria and eukaryotic cells are another obligate mutualism. (that's YOU!)

It's been done for a long long time. John Campbell in 1939 "Who Goes There?" used an intracellular parasite as a plot device ("The Thing").

Hal Clement led off the sci-fi use of intelligent symbionts in a mutualism in humans in Needle in 1949. I'm surprised that no-one has picked up Needle as a movie plot.

No the shark and the go'ould examples are not symbiotic. In a truly symbiotic relationship, neither can survive without the other. Humans can survive without Gould and sharks can survive with remora. Anyways I dont mean to hijack the thread i think we all understan what the OP means...


[edit on 31-7-2006 by Tiloke]

The shark example is a commensalism, one benefits and one is not significantly harmed.

For a human with a T'okra, it's a facultative mutualism: the human can do without it, but benefits. From the T'okra side, it's a near obligate mutualism. They can live for a while in a tank, but not well.

My point wasn't to be picky, though, but to demonstrate the point that symbiosis in all its forms is pretty common, to the point that you can make picky observations about it, it's very well defined. Every eukaryotic cell has symbionts in it; you are chock full of mutualisms, parasites and commensalisms from little insects that clean your eyelash pores, to bacteria that feed on the material in your colon to produce vitamins, to the mitochondria in your cells.

And my second point was, it's not that new an idea in sci-fi either, it's been around since your granddad. There may be examples prior to "Who Goes There?", it's the oldest such story (that and Needle) that I could recall off the cuff.

PS: you may be thinking that symbiosis is synonymous with mutualism; it is not. Symbiosis includes mutualism, commensalism and parasitism, which is why I keep bringing them up in examples. I think the common newspaper usage is to call mutualism symbiosis, but that's not quite accurate.

PPS: Duh. If you allow for spiritual creatures as natural (and existent) then demonic possession would be a literary example of a parasitism. Thus, I give you the Gaderene swine event, CA 0 BC.

[edit on 31-7-2006 by Tom Bedlam]

[edit on 31-7-2006 by Tom Bedlam]

The bacteria in your intestines break down the food. Without them, you wouldn't live. There's your symbiotic relationship