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Our Master of Microscopes James was fascinated by something he found in some samples he had been given from Portugal. Something that would lead us to a kraken in the microcosmos…but how?
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More from Jam’s Germs:
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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCn4UedbiTeN96izf-CxEPbg
Hosted by Hank Green:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/hankgreen
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/vlogbrothers
Music by Andrew Huang:
https://www.youtube.com/andrewhuang
Journey to the Microcosmos is a Complexly production.
Find out more at https://www.complexly.com
SOURCES:
https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S1434461016300128
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1055790315002080
Our Master of Microscopes James was fascinated by something he found in some samples he had been given from Portugal. Something that would lead us to a kraken in the microcosmos…but how?
Follow Journey to the Microcosmos:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/journeytomicro
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JourneyToMicro
Shop The Microcosmos:
https://www.microcosmos.store
Support the Microcosmos:
http://www.patreon.com/journeytomicro
More from Jam’s Germs:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jam_and_germs
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCn4UedbiTeN96izf-CxEPbg
Hosted by Hank Green:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/hankgreen
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/vlogbrothers
Music by Andrew Huang:
https://www.youtube.com/andrewhuang
Journey to the Microcosmos is a Complexly production.
Find out more at https://www.complexly.com
SOURCES:
https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S1434461016300128
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1055790315002080
This episode is sponsored by Squarespace.
Go to squarespace.com/microcosmos to get a free trial and 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Right now, we’re looking at a sample that came from Portugal.
And if you were to describe it to someone, you might note the long green organisms snaking diagonally across the screen, or maybe the tiny creatures vibrating next to them. But when our master of microscopes James was watching this, he was fascinated by something you might not have noticed right away. Something that would lead us to a kraken in the microcosmos...
But how? What was the bit that had James so intrigued? It was that tiny little round thing here.
So what is it? Well, we don’t know the exact species. But more generally, it is something known as a filose amoeba.
If you didn’t notice it right away, don’t worry. Filose amoeba are often quite small, which means they are often overlooked. Their size sets them apart from a lot of the amoebas we’ve seen on our journey through the microcosmos.
This particular amoeba, for example, a pelomyxa, is a giant even by normal microcosmos standards, growing as long as 5 millimeters in length. Next to these filose amoeba, the pelomyxa seems like it’s actually three giants in a trench coat. The word “amoeba” has become a fairly loose term.
It describes a number of organisms that aren’t necessarily related to each other, but have a similar sort of approach to body structure and movement— particularly, it's their reliance on pseudopodia, those extensions that protrude out of amoebas and help them move and gather food. But even within amoeba, there are other similarly loose categories. And “filose amoeba” is one of those.
As a term, it’s been around since at least 1865. And it’s one of those handy catch-all terms that James has been using since the beginning of his microscopy adventures. So what kind of organisms can you call a “filose amoeba”?
Well, if they are an amoeba with very thin pseudopodia, then the term will likely fit. It’s not a name that can tell you much about where the organism you’re watching sits phylogenetically. But names don’t always have to give you the full life story of an organism.
Sometimes they’re just handy. “Filose” means thread-like, and looking at the two amoebas in this clip, you can get a sense for the thinness of those filose pseudopodia (or filopodia). Even at 1000x magnification, the filopodia are so hard to see. But they are there… they just look a bit like hairline fractures along the slide, reaching out to the nonmotile bacteria growing on the slide.
The limnofila at the center of the screen is also gathering up bacteria to eat. And it’s really hard to see, but the thread-like pseudopodia look like they are dotted with beads or knots. Those little round additions are extrusomes, which help them capture their food.
But we mentioned something about krakens in the beginning of this video. And so you might be wondering what a tiny amoeba has to do with a giant legendary octopus-like creature. Well, when James was looking at his tiny amoeba, one of his first thoughts was, “Is this a kraken?” Of course, he was not actually thinking of the mythical creature.
He was referring to something we think is even cooler. He was referring to this, an amoeba called Kraken. Here we are watching it use its filopodia to extend far beyond the reaches of its tiny body.
While the organism itself is only around 10 micrometers in diameter, its filopodia can extend to around 500 micrometers. We should note that the kraken actually moves very slowly, and what we’re watching here has been sped up quite a bit so that we can see the amoeba in action. And one of the things James noted is just how different this way of gathering food looks compared to other amoebas, like this one, which has managed to wrap around an organism on its way to consuming it.
The Kraken, on the other hand, looks like it’s using its pseudopodia as part of an extravagant beading project, only the beads are food and they won’t end up displayed anywhere. The Kraken amoeba was given its name by a scientist named Kenneth Dumack, who was inspired by its octopus-like arms and the way it captures food. So James reached out to Kenneth to ask if his amoeba might be a Kraken.
Kenneth confirmed that the amoeba certainly looks like one, but the sighting of it from a Portuguese shoreline seems unusual. Up until this point, the only known examples have come from soil samples. So for now, we can not tell for sure that this is a Kraken.
But if it is, this would be the first recording of a Kraken from a marine habitat, which we feel would be kind of cool given the oceanic home of its mythical namesake. We have to respect the imagination of scientists who look at tiny amoebas and manage to connect them to mythical beasts. But even when we look at the tiny amoebas that didn’t end up with such an immense name, we have to appreciate that there’s something kind of epic buried in their unassuming appearance.
There is this sprawling mystery of how so many organisms spread across billions of years of evolution landed on such a similar way of life. So much of what we finally know about amoeba comes from our ability to study them at a genetic level, which lets us see past their supposedly similar exteriors and uncover the differences that make them distinct from each other. And even when we cannot observe the amoebas directly, the presence of their DNA in the environment has helped us learn more about them— like that there might be Krakens in a lake in Antarctica.
So if you have ever wondered how to find a kraken, well, maybe you should look first for something very, very tiny. Thank you for coming on this journey with us as we explore the unseen world that surrounds us. And thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode. Squarespace is a powerful all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online.
Whether you're just starting out or managing a growing brand, Squarespace makes it easy to create a beautiful website, engage with your audience, and sell anything from products to content to time, all in one place, all on your terms. If you want a place to organize and share beautiful video content, you can do that on Squarespace. You can set the price for viewers to access your videos, whether that’s a one-time fee or subscription or members-only content.
And with flexible payment options, checkout for your customers will be seamless. Squarespace offers a robust set of analytics to monitor traffic and sales, giving you the data you need to grow your audience. So go to Squarespace.com to sign up for a free trial, and when you’re ready to launch, go to squarespace.com/microcosmos to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.
All the names on the screen right now are the names of individual people who are our patrons on Patreon. That's a way to support the kinds of things that you want to see in the world. And these people want to see this.
And we think that makes them pretty weird, but also very, very special. If you want to see more from our Master of Microscopes, James Weiss, you can check out Jam and Germs on Instagram. And if you want to see more from us, there's so many videos on our YouTube channel.
Go to squarespace.com/microcosmos to get a free trial and 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Right now, we’re looking at a sample that came from Portugal.
And if you were to describe it to someone, you might note the long green organisms snaking diagonally across the screen, or maybe the tiny creatures vibrating next to them. But when our master of microscopes James was watching this, he was fascinated by something you might not have noticed right away. Something that would lead us to a kraken in the microcosmos...
But how? What was the bit that had James so intrigued? It was that tiny little round thing here.
So what is it? Well, we don’t know the exact species. But more generally, it is something known as a filose amoeba.
If you didn’t notice it right away, don’t worry. Filose amoeba are often quite small, which means they are often overlooked. Their size sets them apart from a lot of the amoebas we’ve seen on our journey through the microcosmos.
This particular amoeba, for example, a pelomyxa, is a giant even by normal microcosmos standards, growing as long as 5 millimeters in length. Next to these filose amoeba, the pelomyxa seems like it’s actually three giants in a trench coat. The word “amoeba” has become a fairly loose term.
It describes a number of organisms that aren’t necessarily related to each other, but have a similar sort of approach to body structure and movement— particularly, it's their reliance on pseudopodia, those extensions that protrude out of amoebas and help them move and gather food. But even within amoeba, there are other similarly loose categories. And “filose amoeba” is one of those.
As a term, it’s been around since at least 1865. And it’s one of those handy catch-all terms that James has been using since the beginning of his microscopy adventures. So what kind of organisms can you call a “filose amoeba”?
Well, if they are an amoeba with very thin pseudopodia, then the term will likely fit. It’s not a name that can tell you much about where the organism you’re watching sits phylogenetically. But names don’t always have to give you the full life story of an organism.
Sometimes they’re just handy. “Filose” means thread-like, and looking at the two amoebas in this clip, you can get a sense for the thinness of those filose pseudopodia (or filopodia). Even at 1000x magnification, the filopodia are so hard to see. But they are there… they just look a bit like hairline fractures along the slide, reaching out to the nonmotile bacteria growing on the slide.
The limnofila at the center of the screen is also gathering up bacteria to eat. And it’s really hard to see, but the thread-like pseudopodia look like they are dotted with beads or knots. Those little round additions are extrusomes, which help them capture their food.
But we mentioned something about krakens in the beginning of this video. And so you might be wondering what a tiny amoeba has to do with a giant legendary octopus-like creature. Well, when James was looking at his tiny amoeba, one of his first thoughts was, “Is this a kraken?” Of course, he was not actually thinking of the mythical creature.
He was referring to something we think is even cooler. He was referring to this, an amoeba called Kraken. Here we are watching it use its filopodia to extend far beyond the reaches of its tiny body.
While the organism itself is only around 10 micrometers in diameter, its filopodia can extend to around 500 micrometers. We should note that the kraken actually moves very slowly, and what we’re watching here has been sped up quite a bit so that we can see the amoeba in action. And one of the things James noted is just how different this way of gathering food looks compared to other amoebas, like this one, which has managed to wrap around an organism on its way to consuming it.
The Kraken, on the other hand, looks like it’s using its pseudopodia as part of an extravagant beading project, only the beads are food and they won’t end up displayed anywhere. The Kraken amoeba was given its name by a scientist named Kenneth Dumack, who was inspired by its octopus-like arms and the way it captures food. So James reached out to Kenneth to ask if his amoeba might be a Kraken.
Kenneth confirmed that the amoeba certainly looks like one, but the sighting of it from a Portuguese shoreline seems unusual. Up until this point, the only known examples have come from soil samples. So for now, we can not tell for sure that this is a Kraken.
But if it is, this would be the first recording of a Kraken from a marine habitat, which we feel would be kind of cool given the oceanic home of its mythical namesake. We have to respect the imagination of scientists who look at tiny amoebas and manage to connect them to mythical beasts. But even when we look at the tiny amoebas that didn’t end up with such an immense name, we have to appreciate that there’s something kind of epic buried in their unassuming appearance.
There is this sprawling mystery of how so many organisms spread across billions of years of evolution landed on such a similar way of life. So much of what we finally know about amoeba comes from our ability to study them at a genetic level, which lets us see past their supposedly similar exteriors and uncover the differences that make them distinct from each other. And even when we cannot observe the amoebas directly, the presence of their DNA in the environment has helped us learn more about them— like that there might be Krakens in a lake in Antarctica.
So if you have ever wondered how to find a kraken, well, maybe you should look first for something very, very tiny. Thank you for coming on this journey with us as we explore the unseen world that surrounds us. And thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode. Squarespace is a powerful all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online.
Whether you're just starting out or managing a growing brand, Squarespace makes it easy to create a beautiful website, engage with your audience, and sell anything from products to content to time, all in one place, all on your terms. If you want a place to organize and share beautiful video content, you can do that on Squarespace. You can set the price for viewers to access your videos, whether that’s a one-time fee or subscription or members-only content.
And with flexible payment options, checkout for your customers will be seamless. Squarespace offers a robust set of analytics to monitor traffic and sales, giving you the data you need to grow your audience. So go to Squarespace.com to sign up for a free trial, and when you’re ready to launch, go to squarespace.com/microcosmos to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.
All the names on the screen right now are the names of individual people who are our patrons on Patreon. That's a way to support the kinds of things that you want to see in the world. And these people want to see this.
And we think that makes them pretty weird, but also very, very special. If you want to see more from our Master of Microscopes, James Weiss, you can check out Jam and Germs on Instagram. And if you want to see more from us, there's so many videos on our YouTube channel.