Are viruses living or nonliving?

Viruses aren’t living organisms. But there’s some debate over this. Generally, biologists don’t consider viruses to be alive because they can’t perform the functions that living organisms do. For instance, they can’t convert food into energy (metabolism) and they can’t live or reproduce without a host cell.

On the other hand, they can reproduce in the right host cell and they evolve over time to survive. Plus, they can damage and destroy host cells to do so. Because of this, many consider them a “gray area” between living and nonliving things.