This "Planet Earth" segment on insects being infected with a fungus that makes them crazy and then sprouts from their corpse will haunt me for a long time to come.
Now it can also haunt you!
6 years ago
Thursday, August 7, 2008
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8 comments:
Okay, that's amazing. I can't tell if I am more fascinated or horrified...
How long till we see a horror movie spinoff? What are the chances it will star Keira Knightly and that she will succumb to the fungus? (Because the praying mantis corpse kind of put her in mind.) I would absolutely pay $11.50 to watch that.
They already made this movie - it's called Alien(s)[3].
Not going to haunt me. I don't like bugs and won't watch. You can't make me.
Biology is complex and wonderful, especially at the small scale. Last night I was watching a show about quorum sensing in bacteria. It is amazing. They are single celled life but can sense others around them and "agree" on when a course of action is appropriate or possible, then act as a single organism.
Here is a perspective adjustment for you,
" You are more bacteria than you are you, according to the latest body census.
All the bacteria living inside you would fill a half-gallon jug; there are 10 times more bacterial cells in your body than human cells, according to Carolyn Bohach, a microbiologist at the University of Idaho (U.I.), along with other estimates from scientific studies.
(Despite their vast numbers, bacteria don't take up that much space because bacteria are far smaller than human cells.)"
From Scientific American
Cool. Even cooler if that happened to us when we died. I want to sprout a bonsai tree. Granted, it's not a fungus, but this is my fantasy and I get to choose the organism.
I'm thinking one single, perfect lily. That would then let burst a solitary little tear.
No?
I just saw one of those grosser things on Earth, on Discovery even. Bear Grylls was pretending to be stranded in a desert. So he of course killed a rattle snake and skinned it. Then, because it can apparently save your life if there is no water, he decided to save his pee and drink it later. But there was no mug to pee in, so he peed in the snake skin and carried it around his neck in the hot sun all day. And yes, he did drink it.
And, yes, that is just about as grossed out as I need to be this evening. Thank you for that.
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