{"id":2466,"date":"2009-04-04T23:32:05","date_gmt":"2009-04-05T03:32:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/?p=2466"},"modified":"2009-07-30T15:53:06","modified_gmt":"2009-07-30T19:53:06","slug":"scary-creatures-from-the-world-of-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2009\/04\/04\/scary-creatures-from-the-world-of-science\/","title":{"rendered":"Scary Creatures From The World Of Science"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Reading <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/03\/24\/science\/24amoe.html?partner=rss&#038;emc=rss&#038;pagewanted=all\">a story about a colony of billions of amoeba<\/a>, a colony so big that it was visible across a 40 foot area is pretty spooky.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-content\/images\/HLIC\/ed58a3286426f9eb73aa89451fc69805.jpg\" alt=\"Goopy\" class=\"aligncenter\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Reading further in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/03\/24\/science\/24amoe.html?partner=rss&#038;emc=rss&#038;pagewanted=all\">the article<\/a> about:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the fact that these are &#8220;clonal&#8221; amoeba&#8211;all genetically identical copies,<\/li>\n<li>the fact that these amoeba can apparently work together and function as a kind of hive organism,<\/li>\n<li>the fact that the colony just washed away (or, to use a scarier term, &#8220;dispersed&#8221;),<\/li>\n<li>the fact that there are other amoeba who can reach visible size,<\/li>\n<li>and the supposition that there may be giant amoeba, or amoeba colonies, all around us,<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>was enough to make me think that there wouldn&#8217;t be another &#8220;strange lifeform&#8221; piece of science journalism that would creep me out quite so much this week.<\/p>\n<p>I was wrong about that though. <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-content\/images\/HLIC\/4d1b856ec42d0463ff03c90189505e27.jpg\" alt=\"Yuck\" class=\"aligncenter\"\/><\/p>\n<p>That thing is a four-foot long coral-eating worm. Apparently it&#8217;s the solution to a nice little science mystery:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Staff at the award-winning attraction had been puzzled by violent attacks on their fragile living reefs &#8211; in some cases the corals had been literally cut in half.<\/p>\n<p>After staking out the display for several weeks, aquarists decided as a last resort to take it apart rock by rock.<\/p>\n<p>Halfway through the process the terrifying perpetrator was finally revealed &#8211; a monstrous four-foot-long giant reef worm.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>To me that looks like something a particularly twisted special effects designer would come up with when working on a post-apocalyptic horror movie.<\/p>\n<p>The scientists agree, by the way:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;It really does look like something out of a horror movie! It&#8217;s over four feet long with these bizarre-looking jaws. Having done some research we also discovered that it is covered with thousands of bristles which are capable of inflicting a sting resulting in permanent numbness&#8217;.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Yikes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\">Reading a story about a colony of billions of amoeba, a colony so big that it was visible across a 40 foot area is pretty spooky. Reading further in the article about: the fact that these are &#8220;clonal&#8221; amoeba&#8211;all genetically identical copies, the fact that these amoeba can apparently work together and function as a kind of hive organism, the&hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2009\/04\/04\/scary-creatures-from-the-world-of-science\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[112,67],"class_list":["post-2466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-disgusting","tag-science","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-DM","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2466"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2772,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2466\/revisions\/2772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}