Science Made Cool

Friday Parasite #42: Tongue Worm Woes

I got to look inside a lot of alligators a couple of weeks ago. One thing that surprised me was that there were no obvious parasites sitting in either their muscles or their guts. This is, believe me, not true of mammals.

So I got curious – where were the parasites in these animals? I asked around, and no one at the Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge had ever seen parasites inside alligator muscle or intestines, or more than a few big roundworms in their stomachs. But their lungs were another story entirely. Their lungs are full of tongue worms.

Tongue worms belong to a phylum of animals called pentastomids . They’re all parasites, and their adult forms are only found in the respiratory tracts of carnivorous reptiles, birds, and mammals. They look a bit like segmented worms, but there are a few significant differences. For one, they’re covered in a hard cuticle that they have to shed when they grow, which suggests they’re much more closely related to arthropods than to earthworms. They also have five stubby lobes on their heads. The central lobe contains the tongue worm’s mouth, but each of other four bears a sharp hook to ram into its host’s lung tissue.

Ancient Rocks of Doom!

If the Peruvian zombie plague meteorite isn't bad enough, now it seems a Giant Rock From Space may have killed off the mammoths.  Ted Bunch, a Northern Arizona University researcher, thinks the mass extinction at the end of the Ice Age 13,000 years ago may have been the result of a large comet exploding in the Earth's atmosphere.  Bunch and his bunch have found a layer of carbon-rich material distributed throughout the Northern Hemisphere which includes fullerene molecules and tiny diamonds characteristic of impact events.  But there's no big recent crater showing where the thing hit.  Their theory is that an icy comet nucleus entered the Earth's atmosphere and exploded, in a kind of super-Tunguska event.  The blast was powerful enough to cause mass extinctions across the globe.

If true (and that's still a pretty big if) this theory pokes a hole in the long-held belief that humans were the cause of the Pleistocene extinction -- that all those mammoths, New World horses and camels, giant ground sloths, etc. were killed off by early humans with spears and bows.  As I've mentioned before, that always smacked of a secular version of Original Sin.

Meanwhile, those of us concerned about Giant Rocks From Space can use a new version of Larry Niven's slogan:  "The dinosaurs and the wooly mammoths died out because they didn't have a space program."

A tip of the steel anti-meteorite helmet to Rand Simberg at Transterrestrial Musings for spotting this.

No Sickness from Space

The mysterious illness afflicting Peruvians near a meteorite crash site has been identified. They’re all suffering from arsenic poisoning. It seems that when the meteor fell into the side of the mountain near Lake Titicaca, it opened up an underground water source that was naturally tainted with arsenic. And because the meteor was rather hot at the time, it turned a lot of that water into arsenic-laden steam. Inhaling arsenic, even in small amounts, is not good for you. Fortunately, in this case it wasn’t fatal. All thirty people that were sickened by the fumes now report that they feel better.

Concerning Hobbits

More than a year ago we reported on the Homo floresiensis "Hobbit" findings in Indonesia. Since then, scientists have not been idle. They've been looking over the Flores fossils very carefully and now a group from the Smithsonian have announced that they think the "Hobbits" really were a different species -- not just a collection of abnormally small Homo sapiens as was suspected.

Matt Tocheri, the project head, noticed that the wrist bones of the Flores specimens didn't look at all like human bones. And since those bones form early in fetal development, they probably wouldn't be affected by any kind of developmental malady making the Flores people hobbit-sized.

This suggests the Hobbits are genuinely a separate human species. Cool! It's a pity the elves got them.

And a tip of the pointy Hobbit hat to Brian Rogers of Kudzu Online for alerting us to this story.

Arr, Matey! 'Tis the End o' the World!

First of all, it's Talk Like A Pirate Day!  And if you want more piratical goodness, check this out:  a trailer for the special Pirate issue of Shimmer.

Of course, none of this matters because humanity is doomed.  A meteorite from space has brought a mysterious plague, and we all know what that means.  Zombies.  Probably Zombie Pirates, too.

Maybe these guys can help, but I doubt it.  We all know bullets won't stop them.  Time to make sure all your Zombie Contingency Plans are in order.

Food

It's fall here in New England -- harvest time.  The tomatoes are ripe, just ahead of the frost; the apples are getting ready to become cider and pie; the farm stands are full of pumpkins so you can buy them now, watch them spoil, and buy new ones before Halloween.

Many of those fall fruits and vegetables come from organic farms.  Organic farming has become a huge industry, and grocery chains like Whole Foods Market have become giant companies in their own right by selling organic produce to consumers concerned about their health and preserving the planet.

But . . .

Organic farming may not be as good for your health or the planet as you might think.  Australian science writer Elizabeth Finkel has written a pretty damning article about how organic farming methods aren't as good for the environment as the latest in high-tech conventional farming.

Finkel briefly touches on how organic farming has taken on some aspects of a secular religion, but the fearless Brian Dunning at the Evil Skeptoid Debunkatron has waded a bit deeper into that aspect, debunking myths about organic and conventional farming.

To a very great extent, the whole premise of organic farming is based on a fallacy:  that what is "natural" is somehow superior to what is not.  This is known as the "Appeal to Nature" and is, quite simply, illogical.  Sometimes what is natural is better, sometimes it isn't.

Regarding food, natural definitely isn't always better.  Here's food maven Jeffrey Steingarten explaining how salad can kill you.

So, now that it's harvest time, hit those farmers' markets and farm stands for some of that agricultural bounty -- a joint production of Nature and Science.

Diane’s Research Trip to Louisiana

Dissect. Draw. Photograph. Dissect. Draw. Photograph. Dissect. Draw. Photograph. Lunch. Cripes, BIG gator. Dissect. Draw. Photograph. Raining. Dissect. Draw. Photograph. Raining sideways. Move specimen to lab shed. Dissect. Draw. Photograph. Sounds like taiko drums on the roof. Clean up for the day. Dinner. Tropical storm, you say? Sleep. What’s that howling noise? Only wind. Blowing hard, though. Back to sleep. Wake up. Breakfast. What? We had a hurricane? Dissect. Draw. Photograph.

What Did They Expect?

A multi-species team of spiders have built the world's biggest web over a pond in Texas.  Apparently a wet summer led to a boom in bugs, and the spiders are taking advantage of it.

And of course, any Texan could tell you that everything's bigger in Texas.

The Sound of Pi

If you've ever wondered what the digits of pi would sound like if converted to musical notes, you can find out here.  It creates surprisingly pleasant music, though of course there isn't much structure to it.

A tip of the Zygote hat to David Szondy of Ephemeral Isle.

RIP Alex

Alex the Gray Parrot has died at the age of 31. GrrlScientist writes about Irene Pepperberg and her work with Alex.