Question: what other animals do you look for diseases in

Cassandra Raby answered on 9 Nov 2013:

Hi… I’m glad you asked!

Before I studied baboons I was studying birds, especially robins. I was looking at something called ‘ectoparasites’ on the birds. Parasites can cause disease as they use their ‘host’ to survive, so they can drink their blood or take some of the hosts food for themselves… there are some really interesting and horrible examples! It’s almost like a horror movie!

So parasites can either live inside the host (known as ‘endo’) or on the outside (‘ecto’). So I was looking at parasites living on the outside of the birds that are known as ‘feather mites’. These live on the feathers and eat oil that birds produce and cover their feathers with.. and you can spot these mites by holding a birds wing to the light and looking for small black spots.
So the look at the birds feathers I had to catch them all to have a look at their wings.

Mites are interesting to study, there are so many different types and some live on humans too! Mites are part of the Class: Aracnida – the same as spiders and scorpions.