Journey to the Microcosmos

If we were to write a fable to get this moral across, it would have to star the freshwater cnidarian called the hydra. Because in the hydra, the question of butts connects to the ambiguities of immortality, which in turn relates to the befuddling matter of sexual reproduction.

One of the most common questions we get asked here on Journey to the Microcosmos comes from all of you who are thinking of starting your own microscopic journeys and want a little nudge in the right direction. The question is: what microscope should I use?

Every time we see diatoms, we have to give it to them: they’re just simply stunning. They’re single-celled and major producers of the oxygen we breathe, but the real reason we love seeing them is because of their frustules.

These particular little green organisms show up in the background of other organism’s lives, providing pops of color among other debris. What you are looking at is not a single organism, but rather a gathering of them. Those green bits are consortia of bacteria.

You might wonder why we would care if a demodex has a butthole or not. Well, we care because they live on our face.

Do microbes ever feel fear? Or concern? Or trepidation? While they can’t exactly tell us, they probably don’t– at least not in ways that we could understand. But we can tell that they definitely experience stress.

A useful principle in the story of life is that you should never underestimate algae or cyanobacteria. They’ll just always manage to surprise you, and more importantly, to remind you that everything you have comes down, eventually, to them.

Our world today, the one that we have constructed, feels as if it runs on plastic. It is a building block in our bags, our bottles, clothing, toys, the list could go on and on. Plastic has become so prevalent that it’s almost impossible to escape.

Blood is a useful substance, not just for our life, but for our way of thinking. It signifies life, but also accompanies death. It unites those who share it, but in doing so it divides others. It runs hot, it runs cold. Whatever it is we need to describe, blood is there for us to project onto, flowing through us.

Microbes are not just blobs. They are very well-evolved biological machinery, the product of eons of evolution that have exposed their ancestors and them to different homes and food and threats.

As you’re wandering through the aisles of the grocery store, you might find your attention caught on any number of things. Frozen pizza. Cupcakes. Wine. And as delicious as all of those are, we doubt that any of them undergoes as spectacular of a transformation as a packet of instant yeast does when you shoot lasers at it.

The microcosmos is not always a graceful space. Sometimes an organism just needs to get around the way it gets around, even if that means looking like a swimming elephant head with a truncated snout at one end and a rat tail at the other.

This might not look like much. But every day, tiny little things like this are raining down on our planet. Each one is small, about a millimeter across. But over the course of a year, each individual piece that makes its way to Earth’s surface adds up to around 30,000 tons.

You may not want to think about it this way, but your mouth is really just one giant, wet cave for microbes. From the perspective of bacteria, your mouth is not a tool. It is a home. It is a place that provides shelter and food, but it is also a place that can pose many threats. And the interplay between our mouths and the microbes that take up residence within them ends up, inevitably, affecting our own health.

If you’ve been with us on our journey for a while, you’ve probably heard us say the phrase “we don’t know” a lot. The microcosmos doesn’t guarantee answers, and we’ve often found ourselves looking at some unusual behavior or beautiful form that represents some fascinating, unresolved mystery.

Science is built on questions. So let’s start today with one: what do you think happens when you set off an electrical spark in the microcosmos?

The Gastrotrich has long been a personal favorite microbe of several members of the Journey to the Microcosmos crew. But while we were able to see a lot with the microscopes we had at the time, James—our master of microscopes—has made some significant upgrades since then and this means that we are now able to see gastrotrichs in a whole new light.

Imagine that this is the beginning of the last thing you’ll ever see, an empty landscape with thin lines scratched across it. But those lines suddenly sharpen and gather into a dense mass that spreads from the crown that sits atop a giant, studded with greens and yellows. A giant that is in search of one thing: food.

Watching this Peranema feels a bit like watching a cat waffling back and forth between whether or not it wants to take a nap. Sometimes the Peranema stretches, its body undulating into an elongated, indescribable geometry as its flagella twitch like whiskers. And then, sometimes, it curls up into a cozy circle, tucking one end into itself the way any feline friend you might know curls up around the perfect beam of sunshine.

Sometimes our journey through the microcosmos feels like an expedition, a voyage filled with deep dives into the masses of organisms basking under the glow of our microscope. So what does it mean when you don’t find anything. When you gather your samples and excitedly prepare them for the microscope, only to find a landscape lacking in the life you expected to find?

As animals, we owe a lot to the single-celled organisms that came before us. These are the organisms that laid the chemical groundwork for how we live, from the DNA and proteins within them to the molecules they released into the environment. There’s something humbling about looking at our hands or feet and imagining the mixture of cells within them, and realizing the lessons that keep those cells bound together physically and biologically are rooted in a very ancient study in cooperation.

This is kentrophoros, a ciliate that James—our master of microscopes—had been searching for, receiving samples from all over the world in the hopes of finding it gliding around. When you first look at it, it doesn’t seem particularly special. But there are two things that the kentrophoros is famous for. The first is its lack of a mouth. The second is its coat of bacteria.

Our oceans and lakes are filled with copepods, a myriad of small crustacean species that might float as plankton or infect other creatures1. And as they’re living in whatever manner best suits them, some copepods—like our friend here—become more than just their own creature. They become a surface, a place for someone else (or something else) to settle down upon.

When James first saw these bacteria, all he knew is that they came from a sample taken from a Portuguese beach. And on the slide, the bacteria were swimming in a stark line. And that gave James an idea. He took out his phone and opened up his compass app. Then he placed the phone on the microscope stage to see what direction the bacteria were swimming in. And he found that the bacteria were all swimming north.

Depending on your love of horror stories or your belief in the supernatural, it might be easy to convince you that lakes are full of ghosts. That as you plunge deeper into these lakes’ depths, you’ll come across translucent bodies that come alive when nighttime sets in; with its limbs all packed close to the head, wrenching open and closed like scissors that propel our spectral friend in jarring motions.

Usually on Journey to the Microcosmos, we spend our time looking at living organisms, things like insects, plants, and microbes that move and breathe and grow and die. But today, for these first few moments, these are the only living organisms we’ll be showing you, a montage of creatures whose bodies all share one very eye-catching trait: crystals.

The microcosmos might seem like a safe place from a surprise spider attack, but it would be misleading to pretend that it’s completely free of spider-like sightings. Because even at this small scale, you could find yourself subject to an ambush of the arachnid sort.

The ciliates we’re going to talk about today are kind of…frustrating. At this point in our journey, we’ve gotten used to the fact that the microcosmos is an indecipherable mess at times, filled with organisms that look like each other, and who have familial relationships that seem obvious but then turn out to be a figment of our own limited imaginations. And these ciliates are yet another entry in the long-standing saga of ever-changing taxonomies that define our understanding of microbial species. The plot twist is inevitable.

Tardigrades have been through a lot. They’ve been sent to the moon. They’ve had the moisture sapped out of them. At times, they’ve been in extreme heat. And at other times, they’ve had to contend with extreme cold. Well, today, we’ve got a new one for you. A harrowing journey for these tardigrades that have taken them through, what we assume, must be the worst thing that tardigrades have yet been subjected to. These poor, enduring tardigrades got stuck in postal security.

From our vantage point, as relatively large organisms, it can be easy to overlook the microcosmos, because it’s simply too small to see. It floats in front of our eyes at all times, and yet we cannot make out details until we turn to other tools.

It’s often said that one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. And surely there is no greater proof of that than the home of our master of microscopes, James. All along the windowsills and bookshelves are jars and tanks full of samples gathered from ponds, lakes, and oceans. And even his cabinets and drawers and bathroom hold stockpiles of what he’s found. There is just one problem though... the snails.

The theme of today's episode is pretty simple: things we never thought we’d be showing you, but here we are.

James, our master of microscopes, is not a farmer. He is, to put it simply, fascinated by microbes. And that may lead him to strange places and cause him to grow tanks full of weird things. But he is not a farmer.

At first glance, they seem a bit more like plants or a series of flowers with thin, elegant petals. But no, they are indeed an animal. One that has the dubious honor of being defined largely by its anus.

This Loxodes magnus is large, so large that it was able to eat a rotifer, those funny animals we often see getting bullied by their single-celled neighbors. Except, that rotifer is moving. It’s alive, twisting and turning inside of the food vacuole it’s been stuffed into, and starting to fight back.

You’ve heard those worm horror stories, right? Stories of painful stomach cramps or diarrhea or nausea that eventually turns out to be caused by some worms that have taken up residence in someone’s intestines. It’s so terrifying and wild to think of something so much smaller than us causing so much havoc. But, what if worms had to worry about their own guts being taken over by a parasite?

For an activity that mostly involves sitting and staring, microscopy is a surprisingly high stakes task. On the other side of the lens are drops full of potential, a multitude of worlds to unravel and examine. But they’re also fragile worlds, easy to fracture and lose with just a tiny slip of the hand. The stakes only get higher when you’re dealing with an organism so rare that it’s only been reported a few times since it was first discovered in 1901.

We’re going to see a type of motion over and over again because it’s all over the microcosmos, found in and around many different types of organisms. And this kind of random motion may seem almost too trivial to discuss, but this motion that you see is a proof of something fundamental not just to life, but to existence itself. This movement… is proof… of atoms.

James, our master of microscopes, recently received a package from a coral farm in Germany. We’ve explored some of the microscopic creatures and bristle worms that were living and thriving in those packages in previous videos. But today we’re here to focus on the main event: the corals.

We’ve spent most of our journey through the microcosmos seeking out the organisms that are too small to see with just the human eye. The bacteria, the ciliates, the tardigrades. Part of what makes them so exciting to find is that they are so tiny. Every moment we spend with one of these organisms is a peek into something exceptional in our experience of the world, and it’s the result of how much work James, our master of microscopes, has put into hunting down as many microbes as he can.

When you’re in the business of hunting for microbes, sometimes you have to send some weird emails. That’s why James, our master of microscopes, sat down one day to send his own strange request to the people at Coralaxy, a coral farm in Germany.

Somewhere around 470 million years ago, something happened that shouldn’t have been particularly striking. An algae found its way onto land. This algae turned the lands of this earth green, altered the chemistry of our atmosphere, and created homes for future life. This algae would give rise to all of the land plants we know of today.

We’re starting this episode out with a question that we’re never going to have a good answer for: how many cells do animals have? How could we ever hope to count all those cells in each of those animals? And how could we even begin to assume that the amount of cells in one individual is going to be the same for all the other individuals?

Every experiment has to start somewhere. This one began with a container full of dying microbes, and the five cute, pink ciliates called blepharisma that James, our master of microscopes, accidentally turned into a group of cannibals.

We often focus on the organisms, but what about the even smaller world inside of them?

While our journeys are often enjoyed at a slow pace, when we go just a little bit slower and look a little bit deeper there’s always something new to find.

Scientists have observed some copepods eating over 300,000 diatoms in a single day!

When we look at bacteria under a microscope, they appear to be tumbling around chaotically, but over the centuries we realized that their pathways have a purpose.

Arugulus sure know how to get under a fish's skin, literally. Fish will actually throw themselves out of the water to get an Aruglus off of their side.

Rotifers don’t really get a lot of love when it comes to microscopic animals. At least as far as the public imagination goes, the rotifer is overshadowed by its fellow metazoan of the microcosmos: the tardigrade. And we might be part of the problem.

There are only a few groups of bacteria that do this kind of gliding, but they’re found across a plethora of environments, including ponds, soil, and, surprise, in our own mouths.

“But wait!” you might be saying to yourself. “How can an organism be photosynthetic and so afraid of oxygen? Doesn’t photosynthesis create oxygen?” And yes, you would be correct—most of the time...

It's time to dive into our collection of spores, molds, and fungus!

Oil immersion is an interesting and complex microscopy tool.

Sometimes we come across microbes that we just can't learn much about, or that don't fit into a larger story. So, this week we're sharing a few of those mysterious microbes with you.

Original Title: Tardigrade Sperm and Other Reproducing Swimmers Not all hypotheses need to be good. In fact, many of them are terrible. It’s just that when you’re trying to understand the world, you might find yourself believing that there are tiny humans living inside the heads of sperm, and we're here to tell you, that's not how it works.

From trumpets and spirals to floral arrangements, single cell organisms take on many strange and unique shapes. But they don't look like that just for fun, their shapes can help them with movement, hunting, and even defending themselves.

The big Roomba of the microcosmos is fascinating to watch as it lives its sink or swim life.

After over three years of searching for it, our Master of Microscopes has found a Spirostomum semivirescens!

As the search for alternative energy sources continues, scientists are looking to the microcosmos and wondering: Can we use algae oil to power our cars, our airplanes, and maybe even our spaceships?

Bacterial flagella are very hard to spot in our footage, but we see evidence of them in almost every single one of our videos. The question is, how do they work, and are they different from the other flagella we've discussed?

We're going fossil hunting for Foraminifera! From beaches, to the ocean floor, to the foundation of the Egyptian pyramids, Forams are everywhere!

It may not be the super rare tentacled ciliate we were looking for, but it's still a really cool super rare tentacled ciliate!

Alfred Kahl only spent a decade in the world of the microcosmos, but in that time he discovered more ciliates than anyone else ever has!

Our giant Stentor friends are back with more strange stories about these mysterious giants!

It's time to explore a big question while we watch a ciliate go through its last moments.

Today we're exploring the intriguing Ouramoeba vorax. Or wait... is it Amoebophilus simplex? Let's figure that out together by diving into some history!

Are you immortal if you never age? Defying death is not as clear-cut as it might initially seem. What we define as immortality depends a bit on what you think it means to die.

On the surface, Ophyroglena seems like it should be pretty easy to identify, but it all depends on which stage of life it's currently in.

Arthrobotrys is a genus of fungi that not only kills nematodes, but it also sets traps in order to catch them!

We recently discovered some Holospora infecting one of our Paramecium samples. How does that happen? How does the Holospora get in there? And how are they so successful at infecting?

Everybody poops, but how does one poop when one does not have a butthole?

Differential interference contrast is not a microscope, but rather a method that enhances contrast, and thanks to our new microscope we are able to share some amazing DIC images with you!

The world of microscopy is not without its own controversial figures, today we’re discussing Lynn Margulis and her contributions to the world of science as well as some of her more harmful beliefs.

There’s something you probably heard a lot in biology class. And no, it's not “mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell”...

A lot of the microbes we show you are completely naked, but the test amoeba is a bit more modest.

Even in the microcosmos, it's important to stay inside if you want to avoid a virus.

Making decisions can be pretty hard, but imagining trying to do it without a brain!

Original Title: 12 Minutes in the Life of Vorticella

When there are over one trillion species, it can be hard to determine what you're looking at on your microscope. Thankfully we've got some helpful tips for you!

Original Title: Our Tardigrade Had Babies!

In our Season 2 debut, we're diving back into the world of our favorite little water bear friends!

These little hairy-bellied friends lead a very interesting life, albeit a short one.

This week, we're diving back into the world of Stentors to find out what humans and Stentors have in common!

Microbes are used for everything from baking to brewing, but wastewater treatment is where they do some of their most important work.

These world travelers might be, well, almost everywhere, but there is a still a lot we don't know about the famous paramecium.

Where is the line between good and bad microorganisms and why do we seem to know so much more about the bad ones?

This week, the microcosmos meet the cosmos as we explore even more fascinating things about our friend, the tardigrade. We'll discuss their weird weird mouths, how we take care of our tardigrades, and what's going to happen to those tardigrades that crashed into the moon.

We see the colors of the microcosmos every single week, but let's stop and ask why our some microbes are bright green, while others are a golden brown.

Yes, they might eat your brain, but there's a lot more to amoebas than that!

Life is chemistry. From diatom to Diana, life is not a magical imbued trait, is a process of the physics of our universe. The precise and convoluted chemistry of life requires specific physical and chemical situations. And this planet has a dizzying variety of such circumstances that, over millions or even billions of years, living chemical systems have evolved to thrive in.

We also don't really know what rotifers are... but we'll try to tell you as much as we know!

Slimy, a little smelly, maybe even a little gross, but to many organisms, the oxic-anoxic transition is a shifting chemical boundary that has created a challenge for life...a challenge it conquered.

This week, we're taking a bit of a break, but we thought you might also like one. So, today, let's all just sit and look at our lovely little friends while we take a breath and enjoy Andrew Huang's amazing music.

The hydra of mythology may not be as far off from reality as you think! Let's take a journey to the mall to meet our tentacled, regenerating friends!

Euglenoids have had a very, very long time to evolve, and that has led to the things they have evolved into being extremely diverse—so diverse that, combined with the varied shape-shifting abilities of its member species, euglenoids have proven challenging to both identify and classify.

Death is inevitable and mysterious, even in the microcosmos. Stentors, heliozoans, and yes, even tardigrades, experience death in many different ways.

In the microcosmos, it's dangerous to go alone. This week we go on a journey into colonies to find out why sticking together is such a great strategy!

Let's journey deep into the cells themselves to take a look at some of the structures that keep cells alive and others that do... something... that we'll figure out someday... probably.

We owe so much to diatoms! They help us make beer, paint, and kitty litter, and they're responsible for some of the air you're breathing right now!

If you were a protozoan, how would you zoom zoom zoom all around the microcosmos? From false feet to microtubules, find out how these single-celled eukaryotes make their way through the universe.

We know these cute little water bears can survive the vacuum of space but are they actually immortal? We'll explore that and other misconceptions about tardigrades in this week's journey!

1.8 billion years ago, a cell ate another cell, but it didn't digest it, and without that happening, we would not exist. This week we explore the origins of eukaryotic cells and ask the question, "Are our cells more than ourselves?"

How do stentors make more stentors? Does Paramecium reproduce sexually or asexually? Find out on this week's journey as we explore the ways the microcosmos reproduce!

It's time to meet a single-celled organism that is bigger than a tardigrade! We'll learn how Stentors reproduce, why they look like trumpets, and why some of them are just SO BLUE!

On this week's journey, we explore the ways things eat in the microcosmos, from Stentors filter feeding to Dileptus hunting down and absorbing its prey.

Join us on the first episode of Journey to the Microcosmos as we take a dive into the tiny, unseen world that surrounds us! With music by Andrew Huang, footage from James Weiss, and narration by Hank Green, we hope to take you on a fascinating, reflective journey!

We have a complicated relationship with worms. On the one hand, they’re gross. They end up in body parts and cause disease. On the other hand, they’re everywhere. You cannot escape worms, especially in the microcosmos.

Butts. A Whole Compilation Of Them.

If we had to nominate an ambassador to represent the microcosmos, we would have to go with the tardigrade. They’re weird, adorable, and hardy, – a combination of traits that has made them many people’s first entry point into the microcosmos.

This is a world where microbes are both residents and food, which means that occasionally, we’ll have to spend our time together watching organisms, whose bodies are fractions upon fractions upon fractions of a millimeter in size, turn into vicious predators.

As strange as the creatures of the microcosmos are, their lives still revolve around the same fundamentals that ours do. There’s food, reproduction, and death. Yes, even microbes, hardy as they can be, experience death. In some ways, they invented it.

An April Fools Episode