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You are here: Home / Pet Blogging / Trying To Head Off The Next Antiscience Freakout

Trying To Head Off The Next Antiscience Freakout

by Cheryl Rofer|  June 10, 20218:47 am| 45 Comments

This post is in: Pet Blogging, Science & Technology

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The rotifer world has exciting news!

A rotifer that was frozen in the permafrost for 24,000 years has been thawed out, and it has reproduced asexually. It is of the commonest kind, a bdelloid rotifer. We have bdelloid rotifers around us everywhere, even in desert dust. They are hardy little guys and form spores, much as the cuddlier tardigrades do, but not quite as durable.

I “discovered” rotifers with my first microscope, when I put a handful of leaves in water and let the jar sit in a warm place for a few days. The little “mixmasters” on their heads intrigued me.

I didn’t know what they were and couldn’t find them in a book. My biology teacher was unhelpful. I’m not sure when I learned their name. Later, I met Professor Robert Lee Wallace, who is one of the world’s experts on rotifers. He told me this morning that the rotifer world is very excited. They knew the little beasts were durable, but this is more than they expected. They will compare the old ones’ genome with the genome of bdelloid rotifers found in the same area today.

Here’s the Reuters article. The embedded video is too sensationalistic for my taste.

Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner

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Previous Post: « Thursday Morning Open Thread: Setting Forth
Next Post: Why Bother Trying to Understand? »

Reader Interactions

45Comments

  1. 1.

    germy

    June 10, 2021 at 8:51 am

    You should get naming rights:

    Cheryl Rotifer

  2. 2.

    Jeffery

    June 10, 2021 at 8:55 am

    The roaches and rotifers will battle it out after we eliminate ourselves.

  3. 3.

    Spanky

    June 10, 2021 at 8:55 am

    Well, with the melting at the poles we should be getting all sorts of exciting things restarting! Can’t wait for all of those enemies of Godzilla to start waking up.

  4. 4.

    germy

    June 10, 2021 at 8:56 am

    Antivaxxers have long claimed that vaccines, particularly HPV vaccines, can damage the ovaries and cause female infertility. That claim has been resurrected for COVID-19 vaccines. The first example relied on a dubious “similarity” between the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and a placental protein. This time, it’s the lipid nanoparticles attacking the ovaries, echoing very old claims about polysorbate-80. Truly, everything old is new again.

  5. 5.

    Ken

    June 10, 2021 at 8:58 am

    @Jeffery: While the tardigrades look on, rubbing their cute little forelimbs together and murmuring “excellent…”

  6. 6.

    Cheryl Rofer

    June 10, 2021 at 9:01 am

    @germy: I am delighted that they almost share my name, but I became intrigued with them long before I knew that.

  7. 7.

    germy

    June 10, 2021 at 9:03 am

    I wonder if this rotifer news has any relevance to the hopes of finding of extraterrestrial life,  Something frozen deep beneath a planet’s surface, or floating in an atmosphere.

    We’ve learned that some forms of life are way more resilient than we mammals.

  8. 8.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    June 10, 2021 at 9:09 am

    @germy: I wonder if these dimwits even understand what a vaccine is.  PBS sciences was talking about how more troops were dying in the Continental Army from Small Pox than combat during the Revolution until doctors gave them the early form of the vaccine. So that’s what, over 200 years of data on vaccination?

  9. 9.

    Mudbrush

    June 10, 2021 at 9:11 am

    What’s the “antiscience freak out” angle? Is it that on an earth only 6000 years old, rotifers this old can’t exist so this must be a hoax? This seems like a science story that is full of wonder with little in the way of culture wars.

    Surely there was room for rotifers on Noah’s Ark!

    I just want to know if rotifer DNA can also be used for the spore drive…

  10. 10.

    Cheryl Rofer

    June 10, 2021 at 9:14 am

    @Mudbrush: EVIL ORGANISMS BROUGHT BACK FROM THE DEAD!

  11. 11.

    OzarkHillbilly

    June 10, 2021 at 9:17 am

    @germy: You know what else can damage ovaries and cause female infertility. A little thing called “death”. I guess that hasn’t occurred to them yet.

  12. 12.

    Another Scott

    June 10, 2021 at 9:18 am

    Neat, and scary. Nature, and science, are amazing.

    Relatedly, as a probable counterpoint, SCOTUS decisions expected to be announced at 1000 am.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  13. 13.

    Ken

    June 10, 2021 at 9:20 am

    @Mudbrush: Now I want a Noah’s Ark playset that instead of the usual pairs of elephants, giraffes, and so forth has rotifers, tardigrades, nematods, mites, etc.

  14. 14.

    dmsilev

    June 10, 2021 at 9:21 am

    I can give you a heads-up on anti-science freakout due to hit in about a decade: Return of samples of Martian rocks back to Earth, with the potential for signatures of Mars life. Saw a talk yesterday by one of the Perseverance scientists and while mostly he was talking about the current status and plans for the next year or so of observations, he did touch on the sample-return issue. The phrases “welded into a canister that can survive terminal-velocity impact on Earth” and “immediately brought to a BSL-4 laboratory before opening” were part of the discussion; nobody wants to make the Andromeda Strain anything more than overwrought fiction.

    (really, the precautions are to minimize contamination of the samples by Earth life, but keeping Earth organisms out and keeping Mars organisms in need much the same procedures)

  15. 15.

    Ken

    June 10, 2021 at 9:21 am

    @OzarkHillbilly: The Delta COVID variant appears to be especially dangerous to babies and pregnant women.

  16. 16.

    cope

    June 10, 2021 at 9:26 am

    I loved looking at things under our old brass microscope. I don’t recall ever finding rotifers though. Inspired by pics in a Nat Geo article, I once broke off the stem of a flower that was swarming with aphids and the variety of ants that “herd” them. We were so lucky to grow up in a household surrounded by sciencey stuff…the microscope, a telescope, subscriptions to Scientific American and Science and Geotimes and National Geographic and most importantly parents who allowed and encouraged us to explore and learn about the world. A couple of good teachers along the way helped as well.

    Thanks for making me think about all that. 

  17. 17.

    Matt McIrvin

    June 10, 2021 at 9:26 am

    @germy: Still wondering why people who are so scared of getting spike protein or foreign RNA in them are not scared of the virus. Because it does ALL that shit and more.

  18. 18.

    Ella in New Mexico

    June 10, 2021 at 9:27 am

    This was a really nice way to start the morning, Cheryl!

    If a 24,000 year old creature can wake up after being frozen all that time and still get their game on, then I can overcome my knee arthritis and take a damn walk before work today.

    Thank you little rotifer guy/gal. :-)

  19. 19.

    NotMax

    June 10, 2021 at 9:29 am

    The rich get richer, and the spore get sporer.

  20. 20.

    Betty

    June 10, 2021 at 9:30 am

    @OzarkHillbilly: Covid has been found to damage the reproductive system in some cases. So pick your poison?

  21. 21.

    eclare

    June 10, 2021 at 9:37 am

    @Mudbrush: When I volunteered as a docent at a zoo I was told not to hint at anything suggesting the earth’s age.

  22. 22.

    mikefromArlington

    June 10, 2021 at 9:43 am

    @Ken: hear the Isrealies crashed on the moon and released a bunch of tardigrades!  Wonder if they survived the crash.

  23. 23.

    Cheryl Rofer

    June 10, 2021 at 9:52 am

    Margaret Sullivan on Anthony Fauci:

    In a right-wing culture so often opposed to verifiable reality, who better to target than a person who stands for science and facts?

  24. 24.

    randy khan

    June 10, 2021 at 9:54 am

    I can’t believe that we’re more than 20 comments in and that nobody has remarked on the tags.

    “Pet blogging.” That made me smile.

    Now someone has.

  25. 25.

    Roger Moore

    June 10, 2021 at 9:55 am

    @Matt McIrvin:

    The people who say stuff about spike protein and foreign RNA being incorporated into your genome are just repeating what they’ve heard without understanding it.  Their fear of the vaccine came first, and whatever reasons they give for it are just some sciency-sounding stuff they read that validated their existing fears.

  26. 26.

    NotMax

    June 10, 2021 at 9:55 am

    @eclare

    Obligatory?

    :)

  27. 27.

    Van Buren

    June 10, 2021 at 9:58 am

    “Pet Blogging” as a label for this post intrigues me. I for one have never thought to have a pet rotifer.

  28. 28.

    MattF

    June 10, 2021 at 10:02 am

    On topic and worth rereading: Ed Purcell’s famous lecture on ‘Life at Low Reynolds Number’. That thing on the rotifer’s head digs through the fluid.

  29. 29.

    eclare

    June 10, 2021 at 10:03 am

    @NotMax:  That is awesome!  Also can’t tell you how many people saw the silverbacks and said in front of me “see we ain’t come from them!”

  30. 30.

    JimV

    June 10, 2021 at 10:03 am

    Thanks for another excellent post!

  31. 31.

    Cheryl Rofer

    June 10, 2021 at 10:04 am

    Meanwhile, Lindsay Beyerstein and Jeffrey Lewis check out the terminology being used in an ongoing antiscience freakout.

    Here's the whole graph for the last year so you can see the scale. pic.twitter.com/RexorCDRJe

    — Lindsay Beyerstein (@beyerstein) June 10, 2021

    What I take away from this little exercise is that the word choice ("lab leak" instead of "lab escape") suggests which groups of people propagating this idea — journalists and pundits much more so than virologists or epidemiologists.

    — Dr. Jeffrey Lewis (@ArmsControlWonk) June 10, 2021

  32. 32.

    scav

    June 10, 2021 at 10:11 am

    If they’re driven to a panic by melting zombie rotifers, shouldn’t they be leading the charge to combat the global warming that’s going to release the ramtunnelling hordes?

  33. 33.

    NotMax

    June 10, 2021 at 10:20 am

    and it has reproduced asexually

    Early ancestor of tribbles!

  34. 34.

    Doug R

    June 10, 2021 at 10:51 am

    @germy:

     

    I wonder if this rotifer news has any relevance to the hopes of finding of extraterrestrial life, Something frozen deep beneath a planet’s surface, or floating in an atmosphere.

    Apparently Mars was hospitable to life before Earth and life may have come here on meteors originating from Mars asteroid “splash”.
    https://www.salon.com/2021/02/07/why-some-scientists-believe-life-may-have-started-on-mars-before-migrating-to-earth/

  35. 35.

    DB11

    June 10, 2021 at 10:55 am

    With regards to the on-going anti-science freakout (lab-leak), seems that David Baltimore is walking back his earlier ‘smoking gun’ comments:

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/09/leading-biologist-dampens-his-smoking-gun-covid-lab-leak-theory

    A Nobel prize-winning US biologist, who has been widely quoted describing a “smoking gun” to support the thesis that Covid-19 was genetically modified and escaped from a Wuhan lab, has said he overstated the case.
    David Baltimore, a distinguished biology professor, had become one of the most prominent figures cited by proponents of the so-called lab leak theory.

    So not only did he massively overstate his case — a decidedly un-scientific approach — he also got the science wrong:

    Baltimore’s clarification came as he was also challenged in Nature on another of his claims relating to Covid-19, that the coding of a segment found in the furin cleavage site was not usually found in viruses, with a fellow scientist pointing out the same coding was also a feature of the Sars virus.

  36. 36.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    June 10, 2021 at 10:55 am

    Speaking of science, I can’t decide who is more stupid – Gohmert or his voters and donors. To his credit, I think he comes by his stupid honestly, and genuinely believes the stupid things he utters – and white privilege has allowed him to flourish at his endeavors in the military, the judiciary and as a congressman. There’s got to be some rump group of his voters and donors, though, who support him in a cynical way and don’t believe his stupid utterances.

  37. 37.

    Bill Arnold

    June 10, 2021 at 11:09 am

    @Cheryl Rofer:
    Good for Jeffrey Lewis for doing that poking.
    Another (free) etymology tool that can be helpful (though with false positives because old articles often pick up new sidebar links/summaries) is google search with time windows. (Tools->time pulldown->custom range.)
    If it hasn’t been said, “lab leak” alliterates, which might be a tell; emotionally manipulative catchphrases are often crafted this way.

  38. 38.

    Bill Arnold

    June 10, 2021 at 11:14 am

    @Bill Arnold:
    [Ah somebody pointed out the alliteration in the replies to J. Lewis’s thread. Good. ]

  39. 39.

    catclub

    June 10, 2021 at 11:37 am

    @Mudbrush: Surely there was room for rotifers on Noah’s Ark!

     

    Boring into the wood.

  40. 40.

    Ten Bears

    June 10, 2021 at 11:40 am

    And just this morning I was making jokes about viri thawing out of the thawing tundra that hasn’t seen a human since … before we were human.

  41. 41.

    Capri

    June 10, 2021 at 12:56 pm

    24,000 years old? Doesn’t look a day over 20,000

  42. 42.

    Ken

    June 10, 2021 at 1:32 pm

    Should we be concerned that these rotifer thingies will cross-breed with cicada, producing a flying abomination that stuns its prey with sound before burrowing into the brain with its tentacle-fringed mouth?  Asking for a member of Congress.

  43. 43.

    bluefoot

    June 10, 2021 at 1:44 pm

    This reminds me of an old X-Files episode where they found an “alien” organism in an ice core sample. They used a sea urchin embryo for the clip of the alien organism, at which I laughed out loud.

    Rotifers are cool. I first saw one under a microscope in 7th grade when our science teacher had us look at samples of water from the pond and creek close to school. Also the first time I saw spirogyra. I remember how cool it was to see the chloroplasts moving. It made me appreciate the use of chlorine in swimming pools…

  44. 44.

    not_a_cylon

    June 10, 2021 at 3:12 pm

    Really cool! That must be what I’ve seen under my hobby microscope years ago, inside a droplet of aquarium water. Did not get to witness the vortex effect, but did see it acting like a gross wormy thing.

  45. 45.

    Morzer

    June 10, 2021 at 6:19 pm

    I think I speak for everyone when I say that sensationalistic videos of rotifers are why I come to this abode of jackals. Well, that and the naked mopping – or do I mean moping?

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