I think they’re beautiful but one could consider bladderworts really creepy. Imagine being a daphnid swimming around seeing chandelier after chandelier of clear chambers containing your acquaintances slowly melting away, much less if you were sucked into one.
Seeing these plastic “lifers” after halloween, where kids drop some of them while trick-or-treating or they fall off decorations that are put away is both frightening since they’re unexpected and disappointing that they aren’t real organisms.
I will say it’s pretty damn creepy when you’re on the coast here, if you leave a small glass of tap water sitting for a few days you’ll begin to see tiny wormslike creatures growing in it, wait a week and it looks like something from X-Files.
I would have uploaded an observation for this phenomenon that last time I noticed this but I doubt my partner would ever travel with me anywhere again :]
I don’t know many virologists here, so I haven’t confirmed, but they’re mostly likely the cause, or related to one of the species that gives a lot of folks gastrointestinal problems in coastal communities, I usually refer to this as “Atahualpa’s revenge.”
All joking aside, it’s a massive problem, these communities continue to suffer from a lack of clean water. I work in these areas seasonally, and even near the more “developed” areas with beachfront condos, it can be difficult to even find a place to purchase bottled water for a child, let alone to be able to afford the ridiculous prices stores in these towns charge for basic products.
The thought of living in that reality scares me more than the thought being in the water with an anaconda.
Actually the grossest thing I heard from this teacher (who was a big expert in protists and simplier invertebrates) is that they collected dust from the chandeliers and other places in a theatre after child show, they found eggs of around ten different parasitic worms, much more than in a different circumstances, so children are the spookiest beings.
That’s interesting, looking at this information about traveller’s diarrhea it looks like the template for naming the condition is: indigenous ruler’s name + revenge. I’m not sure what it’d be called in Southern California, but if I had to guess: eating at Taco Bell.
south of the border, much of the water is delivered by trucks, the most-ancient trucks on the road generally… the old tanks in the trucks and many folks’ wells (just a giant 4 meter deep concrete box buried in the ground) or water tanks (a massive plastic tub mounted on the roof of houses) are easily contaminated by the larve or others. I’d imagine the larve remain in the residual water left in the tank and also on the surface of the tank in perpetuity. nasty stuff, barely takes any to get someone very, very sick. it’s much worse for children and babies.
