42 Comments
Sep 20Liked by Bryan Pfeiffer

Fascinating, as usual, Bryan. Keep up the investigations!

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Gladly! Thanks, Steve!

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Sep 20Liked by Bryan Pfeiffer

Wow! Thank you for pulling it all together in your essay. Grand!

My most exciting find recently was the congregation of tiny flying ants in my raised bed in the New Salem Community Gardens... I keep looking and learning. Never bored.

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I need to learn more about Hymenoptera!

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Sep 20Liked by Bryan Pfeiffer

Hi Bryan, I suspect you may have encountered someone at some point, perhaps just a wee bit curious about your state of health obsessing over nature's oddities. Perhaps this may help, but even if not, I suspect you'll get a kick out of it: "Darwin's gardener is said to have responded once to a visitor who inquired about his master's health: 'poor man, he just stands and stares at a yellow flower for minutes at a time. He would be better off with something to do'." (from Charles Darwin by Loren Eisley).

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Ha! Yep, that's me! Me and Charles! 😃

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Sep 20Liked by Bryan Pfeiffer

"In nature, all I need is exuberance, curiosity, and an open mind." And many thanks, yet again, for sharing this with us.

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You're a force of inspiration as well, John!

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Sep 20Liked by Bryan Pfeiffer

Wow, so amazing Bryan, thanks for sharing! I have lots of amber snails in my garden so now I have something new to look for! And kudos for not turning the flatworm into a bad guy. As I wrote about a chance encounter I had with a snake swallowing a frog alive, I felt sorry for the frog, but I also felt sorry for the hungry snake.

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Thanks, Margie. Yeah, a snake's gotta eat!

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Sep 20Liked by Bryan Pfeiffer

Cheers to curiosity and your most sincere account of aggressive mimicry. I admit, some of it was difficult to read due to my empathy/ love for snails, but I have learned much from your essay and am grateful for the work you do.

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All of this engendered a new fondness for snails on my part. (And if it was tough for you to read, well, I'm now really glad I left out certain other details. 😬😳)

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Sep 20Liked by Bryan Pfeiffer

So great. I'm looking forward to next year's video of a bird munching on a broodsac in the wild.

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I'll be famous! 😝

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Sep 20Liked by Bryan Pfeiffer

That was well worth every minute of reading. Thank you for taking the time to wonder and then to share your research and insights with all of us.

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Isn’t part of exuberance, curiosity, and an open mind placing oneself in the snail’s shoes… or 🐚… to empathize with what they might be experiencing? I agree that click baiting stories about creatures is selfish. I wonder if viewing snails and worms from a detached point of view can blind the viewer from intuitive awareness and compassion for all involved in these delicate sentient cycles of life and reciprocity. Thanks for the article!

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This is a fine perspective, Susan, with many angles. One of them is that snails, birds, and trematode flatworms basically co-evolved. They've been in the survival business together for hundreds of millions of years. It's sort of "routine" for them. How we ourselves might sympathize or empathize with that shared evolution is, in the end, I guess, a personal decision. As for me, my awareness and compassion tend to be more so for organisms that suffer owing to adverse human impacts on their habitats and lives. We've got control over those impacts — or so I'd like to believe. Thanks again!

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Fascinating and so full of your curiosity. I have been battling an invasions of small ant battalions for several weeks and you have inspired me to learn more about why they are here and what is the purpose of making home in my kitchen. Much less frustrating and perhaps we will make peace. Thank you.

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Ants in the kitchen -- often a tough one. I applaud your openness to learning about their lives in cupboards! I wish I could suggest some reading on that -- but I suspect you'll find some. Thanks, Leslie.

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This would make a great horror film!

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Yeah, but maybe somehow we can make it into a story of shared history and the routines and tribulations of life going on for hundreds of millions of years? 🤔 🐌🐦‍⬛🐛🪱

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Wonderful piece, Bryan. Thanks for taking the barb off the clickbait hook and talking about parasites with such cool, calm appreciation. I learned for a piece I wrote a while back that parasitism is far more common than most of us realize (certainly more than I realized), with over half of animal species (mostly helminths, protozoa, and arthropods, I think) and more than 4500 plant species harvesting their energy from other species. It really changes the way I see the world, but that means I also have to rethink parasitism too. It's hard to get past the horror movie imagery - no shortage of examples - but as you say here we don't really know what it means to the little things who run the world.

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Thanks, Jason. Then there's that great quote attributed to Lynn Margulis, something like:

"Birds are how microorganisms fly, fish are how microorganisms swim, and humans are how microorganisms think."

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That's brilliant (as was everything about her). Reminds me of my half-joking idea that - akin to the apparent behavior modification of toxoplasma gondii - that there's a microbe on Earth that wants to spread to other planets, and it's driving the weird modern human desire to explore space. Musk always looks to me like he has an acute infection...

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Bryan, do you know where I can find that Margulis quote? A quick search didn't turn it up. No problem if not.

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Crap -- I don't have a good reference for it. If you can't find it, I probably can't. Yikes!

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I haven't looked that hard yet, but it would be useful for a possible reboot of my microbial Anthropocene piece. It seems like something she would say.

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Sep 21Liked by Bryan Pfeiffer

If I subscribe, does that make you my host?

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Ha! Great point! 😀 In one sense, however, you need not subscribe in order to complete your own life cycle. (But, oh, if only Substack were indeed an essential intermediate host for readers -- or music creators, for that matter.)

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Sep 21Liked by Bryan Pfeiffer

Awesome, even if their appropriated eyes make me squirm.

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Sep 23Liked by Bryan Pfeiffer

Same! So fascinating but…..squeamish me

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Glad to know that fascinating and squeamish can be somewhat compatible! :-)

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Thanks, Amy. Yeah, I know it's tough for some folks. It's the world -- it's nature.

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Sep 23Liked by Bryan Pfeiffer

Fascinating! And horrifying. Imagine having things in your eyes that are alive. I guess we probably already do though…. But these block the snail’s ability to see! Awful

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Sep 23Liked by Bryan Pfeiffer

W🤩W … Unbelievable and Magnificent!

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