this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2023
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I believe the major reason is because viruses aren’t considered alive. You can’t assign a non-living thing to an animal kingdom. If you do, where do you draw the line? Are self-replicating proteins animals as well?
On top of that, there are various definitions of life and they all have trouble with weird edge cases like viruses, self replicating RNA, some crystals etc. I prefer the consensus list definition. If it’s on the list it’s alive. If not, it’s dead. Want something in the list? Convince the scientific community that your new edge cases is alive.
I thought something that self-replicates is alive. Viruses aren't alive because they can't replicate by themselves, they need another living thing to inhabit.
It's just one of several criteria, and not everyone agrees about which ones count.