- Since we know that fusion happens to damaged jellies, do they remain permanently fused? Or do they eventually grow back the missing parts and split up again?
- If they do split up again, do both individuals wait for the other one to completely heal before splitting? If one side started off less damaged and healed faster, can it abandon/reject the other side without waiting for the other side to completely heal?
Any time anything like this comes up I think back to a documentary on sponges and how they can have multiple individuals in one body, or one individual taking on multiple bodies. Maybe I am wrong, but this has always fascinated me in terms of what an organism is, about super organisms, and even more outlandish thoughts.
What about humans? Are we individual, indivisible beings or are we colonies of cells cooperating as a superorganism? That may sound like a dumb question since our cells are so specialized that they can't survive individually and can't "stop cooperating"... or can they?
They can, that's what we call cancer... it's some of our cells rebelling and deciding to do their own thing, and to hell with the superorganism. Of course that isn't all that smart since the cancer will die when we die, right? Well, maybe not... although I don't know of any documented case in humans, some cancers are known to migrate off their original organism and colonize others! An example of this is the tasmanian devil face cancer... it started on one individual and spread to others, the tumors on all infected devils having the genes of the original individual.
But what about individual cells? Surely the buck stops there and they are individual, indivisible organisms? Not so fast! Cells of all eucaryotes (that's us) contain "organs" (mitochondria) that were once a separate form of life and still have their own genetic code, completely separate from the nuclear genetic code of our cells. Not only that, but it was recently discovered that they are still independent enough that they can migrate from one cell to another on their own.
So, yeah, "individual organism" is an abstract concept that has different meanings at different scales and even at a specific scale is rather fluid. And I think "individual self" (or mind) is like that too, but that's another story...
- A summary of Dan Dennett’s hypothesis that plurality (multiple headmates sharing one body) was common and socially accepted in ancient times: https://meltingasphalt.com/neurons-gone-wild/
- A primer from a few Google engineers who are plural and describe what that’s like, complete with anecdata, failure states, etiquette, suggestions for collaboration, etc: https://www.pluralpride.com/playbook Told through the lens of dissociative identity disorder (generalized) as an intuition pump. Audience is “sympathetic teammates who want to learn more”
It happens, although only when we are at a very early stage of development, a time when we share some traits with jellyfish. The growth of an embryo tracks our evolution. If you ever see a dog, or a person (see the model taylor muhl) with a color split down the middle of their body, there is a reasonable chance they joined with a twin in utero. Absent a color split, no doubt many of us are totally unaware that we may contain multiple gene sets.
They’re even more interesting than most colonial organisms because they’re made up of seven different colonies, all sharing the exact same genetics but morphing into different functions. They have a level of differentiation normally ascribed to much more complex organisms, that also looks nothing like their lifecycle.
There are two types of slime mold: one that's a colony of many cells, and another that's a single organism: one giant super cell with multiple nuclei. I don't know which one tastes better though, but I do know a recipe for dog vomit slime mold, which is plasmodial, or acellular: an giant single cell organism, not a colony.
>There are two types of slime mold: cellular and acellular (plasmodial). During the life cycle of cellular slime molds, they remain as single cells. When an individual cell encounters a food source, it sends out a chemical signal which attracts others of its kind, drawing them in until they form a mass which is capable of movement in an amoeba-like fashion, with each cell maintaining its individual integrity. The fruiting bodies of cellular slime molds release spores, each of which becomes a single amoeboid cell when it germinates. Cellular slime molds are rarely visible to the naked eye.
>On the other hand, plasmodial slime molds start out as individual amoeboid cells, but join together to form a multi-nucleate mass having only one cellular membrane (a "super-cell" containing multiple nuclei). This mass is referred to as a plasmodium and is frequently observed as threads of "slime" on rotting wood. The plasmodium matures into a network of interconnected filaments, which slowly moves as a unit as its protoplasm streams along the network. These plasmodia can be quite large; some species have been recorded to be over thirty square meters in size!
>Also referred to as myxomycetes, plasmodial slime molds are commonly seen on decaying forest litter and rotting wood. They play an important role as decomposers and recyclers of nutrients in the food web. Their diet consists of the bacteria which feed on decomposing plant matter. In turn, slime molds may be consumed by nematodes, beetles, and other larger life forms. In the laboratory, slime molds have demonstrated the ability to navigate a maze in order to reach a food source, and to anticipate the reward of food at a future time after having been fed on a regular schedule at one location. They communicate via chemical signals to others of their kind. That's pretty impressive for an organism without a brain! They can be found throughout the world, but the Pacific Northwest and Mount Rainier National Park provide ideal habitat for these amazing creatures.
Harvesting, cooking and eating Dog Vomit Slime Mold:
>Fuligo septica is a species of slime mold, and a member of the class Myxomycetes. It is commonly known as the scrambled egg slime, or flowers of tan[2] because of its peculiar yellowish, bile-colored appearance. Also known as the dog vomit slime mold, it is common with a worldwide distribution, and it is often found on bark mulch in urban areas after heavy rain or excessive watering. Their spores are produced on or in aerial sporangia and are spread by wind.
The first book in Rucker’s Ware Tetralogy was okay but I had this to say about the ending:
The end was simply dreadful; it just fizzled out. There was very little conclusion and a lot of untied loose ends. It was so bad I was literally looking around for missing pages. Will I read the remaining books in the tetralogy? Probably as I have bought them as an omnibus, but another ending like that one will likely stop me dead.
Well I didn’t even reach the ending in this second book – Wetware – it was simply too dreadful.
It was filled with the most implausible plot turns driven by the most unlikely character motivations. The entire progress of the book became more and more unrealistic as it went on. In the end I read about 150 pages out of 200; I couldn’t even bring myself to finish the last 50 pages! Simply none of the critical decisions made by the rather large and badly managed cast were at all believable.
Then there was the science, this was supposed to be cyberpunk, and it did have more of a cyberpunk feel than the last book, but I expect cyberpunk to be moderately hard SF; the technology should be a believable extrapolation of current technology. But this was more science fantasy and at times I’d have begrudged the ‘Science’ part of that description. The worst example appears in the first few pages; a new drug called merge. Now this drug has some pretty awesome properties. Under its affect a person’s body is reduced to a puddle with bones somewhere inside which is supposed to be absolutely and massively addictive. Supposedly the drug loosens the ‘binding’ between cells or something. Also, should two (or more) people take the drug together their bodies, in the form of puddles in a bowl of some sort, can actually ‘merge’ (giving various orgasmic experiences to the participants). Then after the drug wears off the bodies simply recombine, somehow miraculously separating if two (or more) have merged, and re-emerge from the puddle back into a normal body again. That’s assuming nobody has interfered with them whilst they are under the influence, like removing bones or scattering them. I mean I know we’re coming up with some pretty funky biochemistry these days but, please…. And there are many other bits of technology, central to the plot rather than peripheral, which are equally pure fantasy.
Now all this might be just about liveable with had it been well written. Sadly it was not. Despite the fact this was only 200 pages long there were multiple scenes that contributed absolutely nothing to the plot. They could have been simply removed and the reader would have lost nothing. One particularly bad example had one of the main protagonists enter a bar of sorts where he just happens to sit down and start chatting with a couple of characters he’s never met before, one of whom just happens to be another moderately important character. As the reader reads this passage it is natural for them to assume that this meeting will have some significance, but it has absolutely none; they never meet again (or I assume not; one was dead by the time I quit but with the book you never know) and nothing of any consequence takes place during the meeting itself. What on Earth is that all about?
So sadly this one gets a big thumbs down and is the first book I’ve failed to finish for almost exactly a year (is it something to do with the middle of August?).
Yes, I've seen QI too. Funny show, but wrong for the sake of entertainment. Fish are aquatic animals. The premise that if a category for animals isn't derived from biology that it therefore "isn't real" is simply and obviously wrong.
It would be like saying the culinary categories of fruit and vegetables aren't real because many of the foods categorized as vegetables are considered by biologists, on the context of discussions about biological rather than cooking, to be fruit. What we actually have is multiple systems of categorization which both have their place, but users of one are trying to claim absolute supremacy over the other, denying the validity of colloquial folk taxonomies even in casual contexts.
They aren't medusozoa but they absolutely are jellyfish, as is plainly evident from the way they are. Incidentally, activists are also trying to rename those which you call jellyfish to be "sea jellies", part of a broad campaign to restrict the meaning of fish, traditionally a colloquial term dating back millennia, to mean only particular kinds of swimming vertebrates. It is unscientific political activism and consequently the best they can accomplish is a paraphyletic group which excludes tetrapods, even those that have fully aquatic lifestyles, while simultaneously excluding all manner of aquatic animal that has traditionally been called a fish without anybody confusing it for a vertebrate (jellyfish, starfish, shellfish, etc.) This linguistic prescriptivism can all be traced back to Carl Linnaeus.
I think you're attributing this to "woke," while the only thing this has in common with something most other people would call "woke" is a penchant for linguistic prescriptivism. I think very very few people see jellyfish as in any way political.
The attempts to erase the colloquial meaning of "fish" are most likely motivated by the goal of protecting whales and dolphins from people, by trying to create a linguistic divide between cetaceans and the sort of fish that most of the world casually eats. That's why, more than any other colloquial use of the word fish, calling a whale a fish seems to get people riled up the most.
While the cause is noble, the means by which they're going about it is wrong. It's cultural and linguistic vandalism. Quintessential wokism.
- Since we know that fusion happens to damaged jellies, do they remain permanently fused? Or do they eventually grow back the missing parts and split up again?
- If they do split up again, do both individuals wait for the other one to completely heal before splitting? If one side started off less damaged and healed faster, can it abandon/reject the other side without waiting for the other side to completely heal?
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