KhizooologyI Contain Multitudes
An animal’s life includes many smaller lives.
Big Idea
Yong shows how relationships between animals and microbes help shape life, challenging the habit of treating every organism as an isolated individual.
More Than Germs
Microbes include partners in ordinary life, not only organisms that cause disease.
Shared Work
Microbial partners can help animals obtain food, develop or defend themselves.
Context Matters
The same kind of relationship can be helpful, harmful or neutral under different conditions.
Partners Across Animals
Examples beyond humans reveal many ways that hosts and microbes live together.
No Perfect Microbiome
Different environments and hosts make a single universal list of healthy microbes misleading.
Science Still Developing
Understanding a relationship does not automatically produce a proven treatment or a useful consumer product.
Khizooo Take
When hearing a microbiome claim, ask which organism, which conditions and what evidence of an actual effect it concerns.
Remember
Microbes are relationships to understand, not just germs to remove.