It came from space! Two-headed flatworm stuns scientists A flatworm sent to the International Space Station has sprouted two heads, an anomaly that never happens in the wild, according to a paper published in the journal Regeneration. Flatworms may not look particularly interesting at first. But lop one to pieces and it’ll magically grow a new head and tail to become a different …
Even without the mistype, "normally 100%" is a very jarring statement in itself.
Not really.
I read it to show that in the vast majority of the time the process is perfect and a 1:1 copy is made, but sometimes it goes wrong and you get a 1:0.5 or even a 1:2 copy (ratios coming from the same place my breakfast is going in a couple of hours)
"Normally, when you make a deposit into a bank account, 100% of the money goes into the account. However, if your bank is an Ozzie-owned "New Zealand" bank, you might only get 40% of the deposit, the rest being the draining of Kiwi money overseas very much sponsored by the government who ignore NZ owned banks in favour of foreign ones fees that are needed to keep the poor starving bank owners from dying of malnutrition".
(</rant>)
I mean how does it move which direction? Left? Right? Curl up and just come at you with two heads? Does it levitate or just phase through solid matter?
If flatworms are split in half at the head end, they regrow two heads on one body. Goddamn I did not want to know about that, like ever. If they took this double ender and did that to each head, do they get a four headed worm? Eight heads? Sixteen heads? Cause that's roughly the number of hours I'm going to be too freaked out thinking about that to fall asleep tonight.
I seem to remember this in introductory school biology textbooks.* Eeee!
Make yer own two-headed flatworm!
Gave me plenty of time to get used to the idea. Never did find any Planaria in ponds though-
bang went my future NASA job, then...
* Not in them these days? Do schools still use textbooks? Or books?
I remember the textbooks we had in music when I was at secondary school.
*every one of them* had penises drawn throughout, and when there was a woman on the same page, the penises were drawn to reach the women's nether regions. Additionally, the same comedians had written 'SLAP' across the foreheads of any bald/balding men in the books.
*every one of them*
So, yeah, the exact same textbooks you used when you were there. :)
Yes, but with half the pages ripped out.
Pretty sure my old A Level Chemistry books would now constitute literature "liable to be of aid to terrorists" as would the history books as they chronicle military methods and tactics.
"The process of regeneration is normally 100 per cent accurate - they never make two-headed worms in the wild,"
Two-headed Dugesia japonica can be bred with Praziquantel, a common deworming medication for cats and dogs.
What's even more surprising is that even after the ends of the flatworm were chopped off, it always regrew with two heads.
It would be interesting to see what happens if two-headed flatworms are regrown in a centrifuge. Russians grew crystals in microgravitity and in centrifuges with suprising results.
I'd like to know how it survived without an anus. Was that why they kept chopping it in two again, to give it a chance to survive?
I'd like to know how it survived without an anus
Have you never listened to a politician? The mouth is the anus! (well, at least one of them anyway)
Wonder how long before Apple claims to have invented it. After all it could very well use technology used in the HUMANCENTiPAD1
1South Park, obviously. The education on classical literature in these parts can be seriously lacking! (episode also has some value as educational material for those who refuse to read T&Cs)
I seem to remember reading a long time ago, that scientists were investigating the fact that if a flat worm is fed bits of one of its brothers who had different behavioural patterns, the patterns would manifest in the ingester.
Wierd creatures.,
I suggest the two headed thing if it is repeatable should be call ' The Beeblebrox Effect', they could apply it to space crew to save weight while doubling brains on the job.
Of course it could produce individuals who are either twice as smart or twice as stupid. Imagine a double Trump.
"Of course it could produce individuals who are either twice as smart or twice as stupid. Imagine a double Trump."
The amount of crap that comes out of his mouth, obviously Trump is an experiment that went the other way - no head to speak of, but an arse at each end of his body.
"Imagine a double Trump."
That prompted me to think of the personality of Zaphod Beeblebrox - only to find other people have already made that association elsewhere on the web.
Sample of Douglas Adams's prescience - which also reminds me of Bojo:
"One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn’t be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn’t understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid. He was renowned for being amazingly clever and quite clearly was so — but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence the act. He preferred people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous.”
Two-headed planaria
Whenever you think you've sussed The Rules in biology, somebody discovers an organism that breaks 'em.
Whenever you think you've sussed The Rules in biology, somebody discovers an organism that breaks 'em.
Ahh, that made me think of the following - sometimes referred to as the Harvard Law of Animal Behaviour:
"under strictly controlled experimental conditions of temperature, time, lighting, feeding, and training, the organism will behave as it damn well pleases."
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