To invading germs, you are a jungle full of hungry tigers. To your gut bacteria, you are a warm orchard of perpetual bounty. To your eyelash mites, you are a walking fortress and a mountaintop pasture. How many generations have you hosted? What do they name the wilderness of you?
People are walking biomes if u think about it
— "Host" by @cryptonature, in his book Field Guide to the Haunted Forest
Parasites and other symbiotes (*symbiosis is actually an umbrella term that includes parasites, before anyone asks) outnumber free living organisms in both species and individual numbers, meaning that the *norm* for life on earth is to live your whole life in or on another creature. Us larger independent beasts are technically special in having adapted to survive the harsh non-living world; to gut bacteria and mites and parasitic worms we're like planets keeping them safe from an immense deadly void.
