Unicellular "Enigma" Changes From Predator To Plant and Back

SilverEar writes "Imagine a creature that swims and preys on others, but once it eats a certain kind of plant, that plant grows inside it, causing the predator to lose its ability to prey and start using sunlight to make its food. Its preying mouth is replaced by an eye that is needed to find sunlight. This is the Hatena ('enigma' in Japanese). The kicker: when Hatena reproduces, one offspring is a peaceful photosynthesizer with the sun-seeking eye, while the other is yet again a predator with a voracious mouth."

Comments

PETA will be confused

[Anonymous Coward]

Plant or animal! Prepare the soft padded cells.

Re:PETA will be confused

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy solution: they will demand that plants possess the same rights as animals. Since they already demand that animals possess the same rights as humans, it will then follow that they will choose not to eat plant-based food just as they refuse to eat animal-based food (i.e., meat). This will leave them without a source of food, and the smart ones will abandon the cause while the dumb ones will die off.

Re:PETA will be confused

[jadrian]

Animals are multicelular eukaryotic. No animal there.

Re:PETA will be confused

[Anonymous Coward]

You took the words right out of my voracious mouth.

Re:PETA will be confused

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Actually once this cell totally integrates this endosymbiotic lifeform (the next step) it might very well become eukaryotic. Ironically that would make it an eukaryotic plant, which would presumably very easily evolve back into a predator.

when Hatena reproduces, one offspring is a peaceful photosynthesizer with the sun-seeking eye, while the other is yet again a predator with a voracious mouth."

The explanation is simple : cell division in the parent organism does not trigger cell division in the endosymbiotic lifeform. That endosymbiotic lifeform might very well be thought of as an infection.

Re:PETA will be confused

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy solution: they will demand that plants possess the same rights as animals. Since they already demand that animals possess the same rights as humans, it will then follow that they will choose not to eat plant-based food just as they refuse to eat animal-based food (i.e., meat). This will leave them without a source of food, and the smart ones will abandon the cause while the dumb ones will die off.

Is it not entirely possible that they will use the same plant to use photosynthesis themselves, solving their dilemma?

Re:PETA will be confused

[Starlon]

This thing sounds worse than a Politician to me.

Fixed that for you.

Re:PETA will be confused

[Anonymous Coward]

"Smart" isnÂt exactly the kind of adjective one should ever use to describe PETA members.

Re:PETA will be confused

[sjames]

I suspect politicians are simply a colony of these. Their campaigning certainly is preditory, and once they get into office, they become vegetables.

Every 4 years they shed their sessile nature and hit the campaign trail again.

Re:PETA will be confused

[SanityInAnarchy]

It's basically an argument from ignorance -- or rather, an appeal to "common sense".

Ok, yes, appeal to common sense can be done well, but there are things to which common sense just doesn't apply, and we actually have to use critical thought and science.

Example: Common sense tells you light doesn't travel, it's just instantaneous. When you flip a light switch, light is just on. However, no one questions when science tells us that light does travel.

Common sense can't even begin to grasp the weirdness that gravity is a bending of space-time.

Re:PETA will be confused

[rpillala]

No, not the same rights as humans, just the same rights as pets. Even this is an oversimplification but I think it gets the point across.

The point being that it is not appropriate to speak of animals having all the same rights as humans. I think this is well understood. The right to vote, for example, does not make sense since it presupposes knowledge of language, politics, issues etc. The rights that PETA members ascribe to animals, most basically, are the rights not to suffer and die at the hands of humans. These aren't that far out, when you consider the "arguments" in favor of the suffering and dying.

Re:PETA will be confused

[rothic]

The rights that PETA members ascribe to animals, most basically, are the rights not to suffer and die at the hands of humans.

They have a good point there. Animals suffering and dying in the mouths/claws of other animals makes for more entertaining documentaries.

Re:PETA will be confused

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect politicians are simply a colony of these. Their campaigning certainly is preditory, and once they get into office, they become vegetables.

Every 4 years they shed their sessile nature and hit the campaign trail again.

You haven't noticed the Obama administrations appetite for new taxes?

There's been no shedding of that predatory nature.

Re:PETA will be confused

[Anenome]

Carrot Juice is Murder:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmK0bZl4ILM

Re:PETA will be confused

[Anonymous Coward]

What on earth are you talking about? Do you even know what you are saying? Are you implying that plants are not eukaryotic? What the hell do you mean by "evolve"? Why would it have genes for producing an eye if it was regarded as an infection? Gods damn you!! It's sad that I am the only person here that recognizes you have just used biology jargon and pokemon logic to explain this.

Re:PETA will be confused

[dbcad7]

Exactly, it's stupid.. Would anyone deny their cat or dog meat to eat ? .. It's as if animals should get more rights than a human.. Humans are omnivores they need to get over it already.

Re:PETA will be confused

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because we're all smart!

[ducks]

Re:PETA will be confused

[Tubal-Cain]

It's a bacteria with a parasite that radically alters the host's "body" chemistry, and one of the daughter cells will inherit the parasite. And I presume that daughter cell will spawn a similar pair at the next mitosis division. I see no changing of species here.

Re:PETA will be confused

[Kuroji]

Depending on their region or ethnic diet, having dog or cat meat to eat themselves isn't out of the question.

Re:PETA will be confused

[Hal_Porter]

Except at that point it will be morally acceptable for vegetarians to eat them.

Re:PETA will be confused

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

You're obviously right, plants are eukaryotic. Sorry.

Why would it have genes for producing an eye if it was regarded as an infection?

How exactly would you call a lifeform that changes the operation of a target cell for it's own benefit ?

Evolution theory is more and more saying that genes spread by viruses, and we have little trouble calling those infections, no matter how useful they are in any particular case. So why feel inhibited calling this an infection ?

Here's what happens. You have a virus ... any virus. It contains a series of advanced genes. Probably copied from it's previous victims, or whatever. This virus becomes successfull. So successfull in fact, that there isn't a single human that isn't infected after a while.

So what happens next ? The evolution of the virus and the evolution of the human species are now locked together. The only way the virus can improve it's fate is by making humans more successfull, and the only way humans can become more successfull is by making the virus more successfull. So the disease generating genes are deactivated one by one, for they stand in the way of the success of the "new" human lifeform, and the interesting genes are used more and more.

AIDS could become an example of this, if we're not careful. It contains several very advanced genes. I haven't the faintest clue what this might be useful for, but AIDS contains code "runnable" by human cells to convert RNA into DNA, something our cells can't do, and it contains code that allows for the creation of a special kind of membranes. One thing AIDS is doing is making this code available to a large part of human evolution.

There are lots of historical occurances of this. Some virus infects the entire human population, and it's DNA code is reproduced verbatim in each of us, despite the virus itself no longer appearing in nature. At least 50% of our DNA code is the result of our ancestors getting sick with virii. 3 "full" such viruses have been found in the human genome. One can only imagine how many partial viruses are in there, whose code is slowly evolving out of the human genome.

The difference between prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells comes down to 2 internal membranes. It may look very different under a microscope, it isn't all that different. One way to make this happen through evolution is by having an endosymbiotic relationship with another bacterium, which has a membrane. Then, gradually, since the 2 species evolution is locked together, the endosymbiotic lifeform degenerates into a single function device. This has been the accepted explanation for a few years now, ever since eukaryotic cells have been found with dual-membrane mitochondria, within that first membrane a kind of polar body was found, indicating that the mitochondria was once part of a proper cell that lived separately from it's host. Since then bacteria that look a lot like mitochondria have been found, further confirming the hypothesis. We have exactly the same mitochondria, but with only a single membrane.

So it seems that cells "evolve" from prokaryots to eukaryots by "eating" the difference. The only step to prove this that's really left to do is demonstrate this specific evolution in a lab.

Re:PETA will be confused

[CarpetShark]

The point being that it is not appropriate to speak of animals having all the same rights as humans.

A quick Google will reveal people suggesting the same of the Chinese, just because their culture is different. Another (or perhaps the same) quick Google will reveal many people who said (and do say) the same of slaves.

It's very simple: if it can be hurt and we think hurting sucks, then it should have as much rights as you not to be hurt, because, all other issues aside, YOU will suffer for hurting something if you believe that's a bad thing to cause.

Re:PETA will be confused

[dkleinsc]

Au contraire! Have you ever considered the health benefits of an all-mushroom diet? Fungus varieties for every occasion: portabella, morels, white mushrooms, chanterelles, etc.

Re:PETA will be confused

[mugurel]

Right! +1 insightful! Rights are not imposed or absolute, they are a convention of human society, and they have (typically ethical) grounds. If you go and think for yourself why it is that you don't murder or torture people, you will likely end up with arguments that apply equally to animals. At that point, prohibiting humans to make other humans suffer while allowing them to make animals suffer seems to be more of a convenience than a principled decision, just like it used to be more convenient to deny slaves their right to freedom, and women their right to vote.

Re:PETA will be confused

[Cormacus]

The rights that PETA members ascribe to animals, most basically, are the rights not to suffer and die at the hands of humans.

Given PETA's record, your statement is a bit . . . ironic.

http://www.petakillsanimals.com/

Re:PETA will be confused

[blincoln]

Would anyone deny their cat or dog meat to eat ? .. It's as if animals should get more rights than a human.

(Most?) animals don't have the logical or ethical capacity to even ask themselves the question of whether they should be eating meat or not. They often get away with rape too, but does that mean that humans should?

Re:PETA will be confused

[Anonymous Coward]

your lack of logic and tying to totally separate concepts in an attempt to make one look as though it were as bad as the other.

We eat to survive. We eat what is plentiful. We eat what we like - meat (and some vegetables).
Some like vegetables over meat - that's their choice. Mine happens to be meat over vegetables.
Their choice does not override my choice. They do NOT have the right to take my choice away.

Re:PETA will be confused

[rpillala]

Well, I've heard this one before and I have a couple of things to say about it. First, you can read PETA's response to this at their forum. I admit that posts by PETA admins are very likely to be pro-PETA, but this is in contrast to your source, a website called petakillsanimals. I don't think it will be hard to sort the bias from just facts. The PETA response provides a context that is not presented by the petakillsanimals page, which you can evaluate for yourself. The (my) tldr version of this is: PETA is killing those animals to end their suffering and not for PETA's benefit, i.e. to consume the animals or otherwise use their parts. Perhaps I am predisposed to believe them, so read the whole thing if you suspect I'm presenting it wrong.

Second, consider who the Center for Consumer Freedom is and what they represent. On their main page, they're advocating for high fructose corn syrup and one of their other projects besides petakillsanimals is a site defending trans-fats. They have every right to shill for the processed food industry but let's recognize them for what they are.

Last, I am reminded of Matthew 7:3.

Re:PETA will be confused

[Cormacus]

While my original response was off the cuff (and I see its been moderated "funny"), yours was calm, reasoned, and well thought out. Thank you.

Re:PETA will be confused

[dbcad7]

Then owning a dog or a cat is unethical for any PETA supporter.. Because they must supply them meat. If you had to kill the cow, or chicken, or whatever yourself to feed your pet (while yourself only eating vegetables) it would be obvious... Has it occurred to you that the reason animals don't have this logical or ethical capacity is that they are all part of an eco system that has a food chain ? Different animals and insects eat each other with no remorse, and it part of balancing the populations of the different species. Humans need food too.. Eating another animal is not murder, it is being part of the eco system in the same way other animals are.. All the animals of the world are not pets to become attached to, and there should be no guilt involved.

Re:PETA will be confused

[jeff4747]

At that point, prohibiting humans to make other humans suffer while allowing them to make animals suffer seems to be more of a convenience than a principled decision

So we should prohibit causing the suffering of humans and animals, but what about plants?

When you tear off a leaf, a rapid cascade of hormones is set off in the plant, causing the plant to react to the damage and start healing.

When you injure an animal, it sets off a rapid cascade of hormones causing the animal to react to the damage and start healing. (Animals also have nerves and thus experience "pain" when injured.)

So doesn't your argument lead to the thought that we shouldn't make plants suffer?

Re:PETA will be confused

[rpillala]

Yes, not all cultures have pets or even treat pets ethically. That's why I kept writing. The larger point doesn't rely on the existence of a special category of animals.

Re:PETA will be confused

[Anonymous Coward]

For the record, you only hear from the overly loud, obnoxious, and self righteous ones. Kind of like any bad representation of a group of people. Or, at least, that's how it is in this case. The noticeable aren't usually representation of the majority. The same goes for the religious. You only hear from the crazies, not the humble, society-serving ones that will travel all over the world, spending every dime to help another human being out that needs it.

Anybody who makes generalizations based on political, religious, or philosophical point of views is just as big of a close-minded, bigoted fool as the people they accuse of the same thing.

It's easy to criminalize people who don't agree with you when you're surrounded by more of you. It's cowardly.

Re:PETA will be confused

[Anonymous Coward]

Common sense can't even begin to grasp the weirdness that gravity is a bending of space-time.

I've always been super fascinated by this. It makes one wonder just how accurate all of our super smart astrophysicists are at calculating distances in deep space, and how much time would appear to pass relative to people on earth once they reach, say, about 2 light years away (around halfway to the nearest star besides the Sun), where gravitational fields are MUCH weaker than anywhere in our solar system. Or, for a more extreme example, how would it appear to be about 20,000 light years away from our own galaxy? I would imagine gravity to be pretty much non-existent here.

Re:PETA will be confused

[Anonymous Coward]

So if an animal can be killed for meat without feeling any pain, thar is 'being hurt', you're all for that?
No?
Then don't use that line of reasoning.
The flaw is applying human ethical values to animals without any discrimination. That's never going to be accepted by the mainstream, ever. PETA equating themselves with the civil rights movement is a pipe-dream, laughable at best, insane at worst.

The reason the vegan movement sucks is because they are trying to force their values on others. Not even Christians try to do that anymore, you realize that? By using force, PETA and their allies put themselves into the same category as Muslim terrorists, militant anarchists, and all manner of other tyrants whom arrogantly believe they are right and are willing to kill to subdue the world to their view. That will never be accepted.

If you believe eating meat is wrong, let it be on your conscience and abstain. Other people have no problem with it, end of story.

All eating will end anyway as soon as the singularity arrives. Far better off contributing to society towards that goal rather than wasting your efforts on forcing people to change what they eat. May as well try to convince people to stop having sex, see where that gets you.

Interesting find...

[glitch23]

to say the least, however:

The endosymbiotic hypothesis maintains that eukaryotes evolved from symbiotic interactions between bacteria. There is plenty of evidence for that in chloroplasts and mitochondria: they have their own DNA; their membranes, their DNA, their ribosomes all resemble those of bacteria.

This is similar to the statement that says correlation does not equal causation. Just because I have brown hair and someone across the country also has brown hair and many other similarities doesn't mean both of us are related. At least they called it a "hypothesis" instead of forcing us to accept it as verified fact.

Re:Interesting find...

[porcupine8]

At least they called it a "hypothesis" instead of forcing us to accept it as verified fact.

You say this as though "hypothesis" were some kind of weasel word, as though they actually do consider it a fact but are just calling it something else to avoid criticism.

Did it ever occur to you that this is precisely what a hypothesis is, and that the correlation =/= causation thing is the very reason that it is considered a hypothesis? I'm sure that these biologists have some vague idea what they're doing. If they thought that they had hard and fast proof they'd be moving this on to the "theory" stage. The very fact that they call it a hypothesis means that they agree with you.

Re:Interesting find...

[oldhack]

Common ancestry may be independent of similar traits, is his point.

The problem, a common one, is that when a finding is reported, notions commonly understood among practitioners are omitted for brevity, and it can mislead when crossing over to non-practitioners of the fields and others less literate in science. Even worse is sometimes even the practitioners forget the proviso of the implicit notions.

Repeated mention of "correlation is not causation" may be annoying, but do serve a useful purpose, I think.

Re:Interesting find...

[oldhack]

I should have written:

"Common ancestry may be independent of [a particular] similar trait, is his point."

Re:Interesting find...

[minsk]

Every time someone posts a stupid correlation versus causation argument on Slashdot, I want to smack them.

I call this the violence-inducing-argument hypothesis, because suggesting causation would just encourage them.

Re:Interesting find...

[Jurily]

And, in fact, you are related because you share a common ancestor, even if it is many generations removed.

Do you know that?

Re:Interesting find...

[njfuzzy]

Yes. All humans alive now share a common ancestor.

Re:Interesting find...

[Jurily]

How do you know he's human? All I see is text on my screen.

Re:Interesting find...

[tepples]

How do you know he's human? All I see is text on my screen.

I see no evidence that any intelligence other than human can compose original, coherent posts to an online forum. So with over 95 percent confidence, posts at or above Score:1 are written by humans.

Re:Interesting find...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is similar to the statement that says correlation does not equal causation. Just because I have brown hair and someone across the country also has brown hair and many other similarities doesn't mean both of us are related. At least they called it a "hypothesis" instead of forcing us to accept it as verified fact.

0) The claim of relatedness is based on a rigorous mathematical theory based on the theory of common descent, graph theory and Levenshtein distance. No competent mathematician in the world objects to these methods.

1) Slashbots are fucking retarded on the subject of statistics, and cannot wrap their puny minds around the concept of Bayesian inference. You better believe correlation God damn CAN show causation in some cases.

Re:Interesting find...

[Smivs]

I see no evidence that any intelligence other than human can compose original, coherent posts to an online forum. So with over 95 percent confidence, posts at or above Score:1 are written by humans.

I see no evidence that any intelligence...posts to an online forum.

Fixed that for you !

Re:Interesting find...

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time someone posts a stupid correlation versus causation argument on Slashdot, I want to smack them.

I call this the violence-inducing-argument hypothesis, because suggesting causation would just encourage them.

This is similar to the statement that says correlation does not equal causation. And as we all know, pointing to mere similarities, or what others might call correlations, is a good way of doing logic.

Re:Interesting find...

[Majik Sheff]

That sounds good, can you make some toast for me please? Someone else here is bound to be a butter knife, so maybe we can get a team effort going?

Re:Interesting find...

[ichthyoboy]

I like Edward Tufte's formation of the saying...:

Correlation is not equal to causation; it is only a requirement for it

Re:Interesting find...

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew it was a mistake to connect my toaster to the router.

Re:Interesting find...

[K. S. Kyosuke]

"JESUS CHRIST! What if I'm really a toaster?"

In that case we would't at least have to ask "Does he run NetBSD?"...

Re:Interesting find...

[Anonymous Coward]

"can you make some toast for me please"

I am a loaf of bread, you insensitive clod! ... (I should also warn you not to eat bread crumbs ... its dandruff, don't ask!).

Re:Interesting find...

[Sulphur]

Oh my God! You're right! I don't anything for sure.

JESUS CHRIST! What if I'm really a toaster?

I mean, I have a lot of the same qualities as a human being, but that doesn't prove anything. What if I'm supposed to be making toast right now?!?!?

Check if you are plugged in.

Re:Interesting find...

[Anonymous Coward]

butter knife? I've met a fellow /.'er once IRL and he was more like an enormous soup spoon in a hawaiian shirt. *ducks*

Re:Interesting find...

[jc42]

I see no evidence that any intelligence other than human can compose original, coherent posts to an online forum.

You just go on thinking that way; it makes life very easy for us visiting aliens. We can move about doing our jobs, mostly documenting and studying this primitive newcomer species, without the need to take extraordinary precautions against being "discovered". Yes, a few humans do realize what we are, but when they try to tell the rest, they're just treated as insane or stupid. The majority uses the same circular reasoning: They've never seen an intelligent creature that wasn't human, so anything that shows intelligence above some minimal threshold is classified as human. This provides additional evidence to the "only humans are intelligent" belief.

Actually, your descendants will thank you for your obliviousness. You aren't keeping very good records of your own history, as you can easily see by trying to learn about the lives of 99% of the humans who lived only a century ago. Going back 1000 years, you can't even name more than 99% of them. But we have the data, for the use of your descendants when they wise up and realize they want to know about it. And now with the advent of computerized record keeping, your records are even more fragile; the data on the development of computers themselves only a few decades ago is now nearly inaccessible due to near-total loss of the (mostly) computerized records. But again, since we find it so easy to pass for human, we've collected most of that information, for the education of your descendants.

Oh, and good luck identifying the gateways to the galactic network, where we've backup up the data and made it available to the galaxy's historians. You probably also believe that all the computers on the Internet were built by humans, because there's nothing else intelligent enough to build such things. We won't feel insulted if you mistake our comm devices for those made in China or Malaysia; honest, we won't. Again, it makes life easy for us.

And we can even write about it openly in forums like this. I'll probably get a "funny" moderation, and nobody here (except my colleagues) will believe it for a second. If you are one of the few humans who does believe, it doesn't matter, because the rest will consider you stupid or insane.

Re:Interesting find...

[BlackusDiamondus]

Oh my God! You're right! I don't anything for sure.

JESUS CHRIST! What if I'm really a toaster?

I mean, I have a lot of the same qualities as a human being, but that doesn't prove anything. What if I'm supposed to be making toast right now?!?!?

The toasters were created by man...they rebelled, they evolved, they look...Human!

Re:Interesting find...

[Daniel Dvorkin]

This is similar to the statement that says correlation does not equal causation.

A statement which is misused far more often than it is used correctly.

Just because I have brown hair and someone across the country also has brown hair and many other similarities doesn't mean both of us are related.

You and every other human being on Earth, regardless of hair color, are far more closely related than 99.9999...(some very large number of 9's)% of living organisms.

At least they called it a "hypothesis" instead of forcing us to accept it as verified fact.

Ah, now you play your hand. You're deliberately ignorant of scientific vocabulary, and of the way science is done; probably a creationist and climate change denialist to boot. Tell you what, why don't you educate yourself on the meanings of the words "hypothesis," "theory," and "fact" -- and why you will pretty much never hear any scientific result described with that last -- and come back when you're ready to play in the big kids' sandbox.

Re:Interesting find...

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Every time someone posts a stupid correlation versus causation argument on Slashdot, I want to smack them.

I call this the violence-inducing-argument hypothesis, because suggesting causation would just encourage them.

Sing it, brother!

It's a kind of pseudo-intellectual argument which is, unfortunately, very appealing to geeks. Stupid, ignorant people are prone to assuming that correlation always implies causation (even if they don't know to put it in those words) and drawing conclusions that reasonably intelligent, slightly less ignorant people can clearly see are false. So at some point they read a Philosophy 101 list of logical fallacies on the web, come across "correlation does not imply causation," and think, "Ah hah! That explains what all those stupid people are doing!" At which point it becomes the proverbial hammer for which every problem is a nail.

...

In case it isn't clear: correlation, when calculated to account for confounding factors and observed enough to establish significance, is the only way we have to establish causation in the natural world. It is exactly how every accepted scientific "fact" (i.e., theory, which is as close to fact as science can ever get) was established. Everything you think you know about the way the world works is based on a correlation so significant that nobody seriously expects it to turn out the be an artifact. And that's all we've got.

Re:Interesting find...

[rpillala]

The toasters look like us now.

Re:Interesting find...

[tepples]

I see no evidence that any intelligence other than human can compose original, coherent posts to an online forum.

You just go on thinking that way; it makes life very easy for us visiting aliens.

How often do you have to renew your green card?

Yes, a few humans do realize what we are, but when they try to tell the rest, they're just treated as insane or stupid.

I'm willing to open my mind. Does your team have a site on the humans' World Wide Web?

Re:Interesting find...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok sure...

But the real question then is.... Can i have some toast?

Re:Interesting find...

[Anonymous Coward]

Its unfortunate that perfectly capable scientific researchers work is compromised so often by scientifically-ignorant reporters who don't have even the vaguest sense of what the scientific process is, or how its used, and end up using the same jargon they read in various papers produced through other media, perpetuating the problem. Arts programs in schools all over the world should involve a technical reporting specialty, which should be required to write up about any new findings/discoveries/theories/hypothesis/breakthroughs/ etc etc.

Re:Interesting find...

[sexybomber]

JESUS CHRIST! What if I'm really a toaster?

There are twelve Cylon models. If you don't look like any of them, then you're not a frakin' toaster.

Re:Interesting find...

[nedlohs]

Always assuming that correlation means causation is stupid.

Always assuming it doesn't and hence we should never try and determine cause and effect and just call everything random is even stupider.

Re:Interesting find...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Everything you think you know about the way the world works is based on a correlation..."

I take your point, but in fact we, and most living things "know" stuff without learning it too. Put a girl and a boy on a desert island without giving them any sex education and there's a good chance that if they don't die of starvation, in a few years time, there will be a third person on the island. They don't need to learn about that stuff. It is hard wired in the brain. Obviously that's just an example. There are all manner of ways in which we know something about the world without having to learn about it. Tigers don't learn to crouch and spring, or even what to spring at. Maybe they need to practice it, but they pretty much know what to do.

Re:Interesting find...

[Muad'Dave]

.What if I'm supposed to be making toast right now?!?!?

It proves that you suck at being a toaster.

Re:Interesting find...

[jc42]

I'm willing to open my mind. Does your team have a site on the humans' World Wide Web?

Actually, some of us do. I have a personal web site that includes a FAQ that describes my job as a sort of "field worker", an anthropologist visiting Earth to collect information about human society. I occasionally get nice messages from others who turn out to be human, saying that they're doing something similar. I also get occasional email from human nut cases with the usual incoherent rambling. That's interesting, too; it's part of the "human condition", and goes into the records. But so far no contact from any government agency. All the stories about secret government contact with aliens seem to be just fiction. You'd think that some of them would want to make contact, but even when we write openly about our activities, it doesn't happen.

Re:Interesting find...

[mooingyak]

In case it isn't clear: correlation, when calculated to account for confounding factors and observed enough to establish significance, is the only way we have to establish causation in the natural world. It is exactly how every accepted scientific "fact" (i.e., theory, which is as close to fact as science can ever get) was established.

Just because correlation has a high correlation with causation does not mean that correlation is causation. Have you considered that some factor other than correlation may be contributing to the causation?

Re:Interesting find...

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Have you considered that some factor other than correlation may be contributing to the causation?

The section of my post that you quote contains the answer to your question. That's what a confounding factor is.

To take a very simple example: if you examine two populations, one consisting of old smokers who frequently die of heart attacks and another consisting of young non-smokers who rarely die of heart attacks, and conclude that smoking increases the risk of death by heart attack, then you're clearly drawing a false conclusion. (Or rather, you may be getting the right answer, but you have no way of knowing if it's right or not.) However, if you adjust for age, sex, race, environmental exposure, diet, exercise, and any other identifiable factors that may contribute to heart problems, and you can show that the smokers still have more fatal heart attacks than the non-smokers, then you have a very powerful argument that smoking makes you more likely to die of a heart attack. If your sample size is sufficiently large, and if you can convince people that you've accounted for all the likely confounders, then you have come as close to "proof" as science can ever come.

Re:Interesting find...

[mooingyak]

I agree with you completely. I just wanted to pick on you a little for essentially using correlation to argue that correlation is causation, although it'd be more amusing (and ironic) if you'd been going for the opposite.

Re:Interesting find...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't be surprised if that got modded insightful. I have the full belief in my mind that you are indeed just another human sitting at your computer just like I am, but you're completely right that that's exactly what I would also think if you were actually an alien.

Bravo!

journal link

[jschen]

Definitely an interesting result. The original article is published in Science. A free abstract can be found here.

Re:journal link

[Anonymous Coward]

So old. This may have more information:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.protis.2006.05.011

Re:journal link

[funkatron]

What about the full article???

Re:journal link

[nedlohs]

credit card here: https://pubs.aaas.org/membership/new_member_setup.asp

and you can have it.

Public Service Announcement

[pushing-robot]

This is your creator deity... And this is your creator deity on drugs.

Re:Public Service Announcement

[Anonymous Coward]

PC nonsense is out of control. Call a spade a spade: noodleman.

Re:Public Service Announcement

[Anonymous Coward]

What, you haven't seen the platypus?

Re:Public Service Announcement

[Opportunist]

I've known that since the momemt I heard about the platypus.

I still have this image of God and Devil sitting in a bar at the end of the universe, had a few beer, God doodles the platypus on a napkin and Devil manages to snort out a "dare ya!" between giggles.

Re:Public Service Announcement

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Some people are oversexed. Some animals are oversexchromosomed.

Re:Public Service Announcement

[pushing-robot]

Which somehow brings us to Spore.

Re:Public Service Announcement

[laejoh]

Pssst, it's not a bar, it's a restaurant!

Re:Public Service Announcement

[Anonymous Coward]

"Don't you know there ain't no devil, there's just God when he's drunk." - Tom Waits

Ugh

[TheRealMindChild]

The kicker: when Hatena reproduces, one offspring is a peaceful photosynthesizer with the sun-seeking eye, while the other is yet again a predator with a voracious mouth.

Sound like my wife

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

Lemme guess, you were drunk googling one night.

Re:Ugh

[haifastudent]

Sound like my wife

What's my father in law doing browsing Slashdot?

Re:Ugh

[Nocturnal Deviant]

You sir are lucky...my wife only has the predator aspect...and shes usually preying on my wallet.

Re:Ugh

[AmberBlackCat]

I wonder what's stopping the killer baby from eating the parent and the herbivore baby...

Re:Ugh

[ScrewMaster]

You sir are lucky...my wife only has the predator aspect...and shes usually preying on my wallet.

She'd need the eye to find the green, though.

Re:Ugh

[beckett]

so at least you can bang her sun bathing sister, rite?

Re:Ugh

[TheRealMindChild]

If there is one thing I have learned during my life on this planet, it would be that no matter how bad you think it is, sleeping with her sister will only make it worse.

Re:Ugh

[jeff4747]

Size. The killer only eats things smaller than it.

Sounds like the foundation for a 5-volume fantasy

[olsmeister]

1. Mother eats plant 2. Plant grows inside mother 3. Mother morphs 4. Diametrically opposed sons are born 5. Decades of hilarity ensue

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Is this your blog?

[caseih]

While this is extremely interesting, we need a link to the actual journal article, or to some source material, not just a link to a blog. Without that we can only assume this is an attempt to turf slashdot to drive traffic to your blog and generate ad revenues.

Re:Is this your blog?

[Mark Hood]

It's alright, we killed it.

The site, I mean - not the wacky organism...

Re:Is this your blog?

[TerranFury]

The blog contains two citations as endnotes:

Okamoto, N. (2005). A Secondary Symbiosis in Progress? Science, 310 (5746), 287-287 DOI: 10.1126/science.1116125 OKAMOTO, N., & INOUYE, I. (2006). Hatena arenicola gen. et sp. nov., a Katablepharid Undergoing Probable Plastid Acquisition Protist, 157 (4), 401-419 DOI: 10.1016/j.protis.2006.05.011

Also, whereas blogs are freely-available, you need a subscription to read the journal article -- so I think that the way this was done is the best way.

Re:Is this your blog?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pubmed.com is your friend:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16224014
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16891155

Re:Is this your blog?

[haifastudent]

Here you go.

Re:Is this your blog?

[Anonymous Coward]

The abstract is freely available, but the article is not.

Re:Is this your blog?

[Shipud]

While this is extremely interesting, we need a link to the actual journal article, or to some source material, not just a link to a blog. Without that we can only assume this is an attempt to turf slashdot to drive traffic to your blog and generate ad revenues.

1) The blog has no ads 2) The links to the original article are in the end of the post 3) How do you expect to understand an article in a scientific journal, when your reading skills are so obviously lacking as to not notice (1) and (2)

Re:Is this your blog?

[caseih]

As the blog was slashdotted anyway, I found the information through google anyway. But the point is why should I have to click through to some blog which may or may not have ads (how can I know without clicking) to see the references to the source? All one needs to do is put the source links in the slashdot summary. I don't mind that people are interested in things and blog about them, but lets have a bit of due diligence on the part of posters. Slashdot is turfed enough by bloggers trying to drive traffic to their sites. That was my point. Obviously you 4) lacked the reading skills necessary to understand the point that was being made. My apologies.

Why does this sound so familiar?

[Mitchell314]

Hrm, one sibling is conniving and aggressive; and the other prefers to be left to its own devices. Sounds just like humans.

Re:Why does this sound so familiar?

[Omniscient Lurker]

You're the youngest too?

Cordyceps

[natmakarvitch]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordyceps_sinensis , albeit multicellular, is also somewhat astonishing

Re:Cordyceps

[Abcd1234]

No offense, but it's not *that* "astonishing". The wasp, for example, does something similar, laying their eggs on caterpillars, which are then fed on by the larvae as they develop. Weirder yet, some variety of wasp larvae actually seem to zombify the caterpillars and take control of them.

Memeaholic

[senorpoco]

I for one welcome our new single celled predatory overlords, but deride their single celled hippy photosynthesizing cousins.

Re:Memeaholic

[H0p313ss]

I for one welcome our new single celled predatory overlords, but deride their single celled hippy photosynthesizing cousins.

Phylumist!

The end is nigh

[nih]

The creature has mutated again and shut down the webserver!

Sounds like the Bee Flower

[Anonymous Coward]

Bees and flowers are the same life form, right? Can one exist without the other?

What happens when chloroplasts are removed?

[az-saguaro]

Biology is full of promoter-inhibitor relationships, and this seems like an interesting one. When the algae is inside the protist, the host's "animal" behaviors and anatomy are suppressed, but they clearly remain in a latent state, ready to reactivate after fission. It makes one wonder to what extent chloroplasts remain as endosymbionts versus organelles in genuine plant species. So . . .
. . .
Does anyone know of any research where chloroplasts were removed from plant cells in culture, to see if the remaining cells revert to some atavistic animal-like exogenous-food-seeking state?

Re:What happens when chloroplasts are removed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know of any research where chloroplasts were removed from plant cells in culture, to see if the remaining cells revert to some atavistic animal-like exogenous-food-seeking state?

There's always the venus fly trap. But, I'm pretty sure if chloroplasts were removed, even in culture, the cells would die. Multicellular plants can't roam around to find food, why would they still have that trait? (the supply of birds would quickly be exhausted)

It'd be more interesting to insert chloroplasts into animal cells, to see if they turn into plants. (plants are more likely the ancestor of predators)

Re:What happens when chloroplasts are removed?

[The_mad_linguist]

Human cancer cells can survive outside the body. They act rather differently.

Re:What happens when chloroplasts are removed?

[az-saguaro]

Yes, you are exactly correct, that sticking chloroplasts into animal cells would be the necessary flip side of that experiment.
-
I was not referring to turning pine trees into Night of the Living Dead. What would be interesting is to see what would happen to algae under these circumstances, or to cultures of moss cells or flowering plant cells. Pick a popular research plant - tobacco for instance - and then pull the chloroplasts out of a few cells, then stick them into a cell culture medium - e.g. agar petri dishes or mammalian cell culture flasks - and see if they become planktonic, aggressive, nutrient-tropic, or if they start to express cell surface structures or other organelles related to sensing and locomotion. Since the algae are phylogenetically much closer to all of this, it seems plausible that they might revert to animal-like forms and function.
-
If nobody has ever done these experiments, now would be a good time.

Re:What happens when chloroplasts are removed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't happen -- they're endosymbionts. Without chloroplasts/mitochondria regular plant/animal cells can't function -- no electron transport chain. That's why people with mitochondrial myopathy are sick, as their mitochondria don't work properly so they don't make enough ATP.
The chloroplasts/mitochondria have outsourced amino acid production (among other things), so without the host, they can't survive.
 

Re:What happens when chloroplasts are removed?

[rtfa-troll]

Strictly speaking you are certainly right. Any human cells can survive outside the body in tissue culture. However, the information I can find suggests that normally they die off in just the same way as normal human cells so they can't normally survive outside the body.

Do you have a better reference for this?

Re:What happens when chloroplasts are removed?

[az-saguaro]

Correct, that is our conventional understanding of things. But what if there are other primitive energy capture and translation systems that remain repressed or down regulated by the presence of these structures? What if a cell could be kept on "life support" for a few hours or days after removing its mitochondria or chloroplasts, enough for up regulation of latent genes that will revert the cell back into a some sort bacteria-like mode of metabolism? Granted, it is much less likely for advanced eukaryotes like mammalian or insect cells or rose bushes, but what about for algae or diatoms or sponges? We can presume that at some point endosymbionts and cells became so entangled that neither could survive nor revert without the other. However it would also seem likely that there is a transition group of species which could still be unentangled in the lab.

Re:What happens when chloroplasts are removed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Plants w/o chloroplasts. I remember something from biology where they keep some corn alive that is hybrid for a critical gene--if missing the chloroplasts don't divide. If self-crossed, one-fourth of the corn is albino and dies as soon as it runs out of stored energy in the seed.

However, see Indian Pipe for a plant that doesn't have chloroplasts.

Re:What happens when chloroplasts are removed?

[az-saguaro]

Fascinating. Thanks !

Re:What happens when chloroplasts are removed?

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect that the greatly reduced genome of the chloroplast would not encode for the necessary structures, having lost those functions to the host cell a long time ago.

Re:What happens when chloroplasts are removed?

[jeff4747]

Without chloroplasts/mitochondria regular plant/animal cells can't function -- no electron transport chain

Incorrect. Plant cells have both chloroplasts and mitochondria. Removal/inactivation of the chloroplasts wouldn't kill the cell as long as it was supplied with food for the mitochondria.

Re:What happens when chloroplasts are removed?

[jeff4747]

Does anyone know of any research where chloroplasts were removed from plant cells in culture, to see if the remaining cells revert to some atavistic animal-like exogenous-food-seeking state

This pretty much already happens in all plants, in the roots. While chloroplasts are technically present, they are inactive since there's no light. The cells survive by eating sugar produced by the other parts of the plant.

You gotta be fucking kidding me...

[lbalbalba]

... as Palmer (David Clennon) says in John Carpenters The Thing (1982), as Norris' head grows legs and tries to walk away ...

Google text cache

[Anonymous Coward]

http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:http://bytesizebio.net/index.php/2009/07/04/from-predator-to-plant-in-one-gulp/&hl=en&strip=1

Hetena's Picture

[Anonymous Coward]

here: http://www.biol.tsukuba.ac.jp/cbs/home1.html

Spore

[asCii88]

Does this mean EA can sue nature due to copyright infringement?

Re:Spore

[TinBromide]

No, that'd be silly!

They'll sue the scientists for discovering something that infringes.

Re:Spore

[Opportunist]

I'd wager that nature has the prior art rights on that one. Another reason why I think patents for genoms are a wee bit silly.

Twist on the article

[VampireByte]

Imagine a blogger that submits its link to slashdot, but once it appears there, that blog can no longer serve pages.

Re:Twist on the article

[JustinRLynn]

Is that something like the sound of one server port flapping?

Scientific American

[deAtog]

For all those interested, Scientific American has the story.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Don't Tell PETA!

[maxume]

Weak. You easily could have worked facebook and sheeple in there. Maybe even global climate change. And global warming.

I hate to admit...

[hedgemage]

But when I read the article summary, one of the first questions on my mind was... How does it interact with Japanese schoolgirls?

Re:I hate to admit...

[Harald Paulsen]

But when I read the article summary, one of the first questions on my mind was... How does it interact with Japanese schoolgirls?

Why, with tentacles ofcourse!

Re:I hate to admit...

[Hillgiant]

The eye (or mouth, depending on where it is in the life cycle) is replaced with a tentacle.

Re:Sounds like the foundation for a 5-volume fanta

[Opportunist]

Please. Not so loud. Fox is looking for a sitcom theme for next season.

Gives a whole new meaning to...

[Randwulf]

You are what you eat!

So... plants evolved from predators?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe I'm missing something, but this whole field of evolution by combination (ingestion) appears to be really underdeveloped. It's obvious in the case of mitochondriae and chloroplasts. But where did other organelles come from? Is it conceivable that they too were autonomous life forms at one point? What about our blood cells? What about our organs? Why are evolutionists still trying to explain everything by mutation, selection and reproduction, when the "tree of life" doesn't look so tree-shaped any more? To me it looks more like a DAG, to say the least.

Re:So... plants evolved from predators?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some evolutionists seem to get it.

Advantageous Evolutionary trait

[DadLeopard]

This gives the organism the ability to take advantage of any advances in Photosynthesis that the prey has made! Thereby incorporating them in future generations! Like some people I know! Always upgrading to the latest and greatest!

Re:Don't Tell PETA!

[geekboy642]

And if you really got worked up, a TIME CUBE reference wouldn't've been too hard, you educated stupid one-dimensional DULLARD.

Food

[mqduck]

After ingesting the algae, this mouth disappears. Instead, it is replaced by an eyespot from the algae. The eyespot is a light sensing organelle, a very primitive eye that guides algae to light sources. In this case, it also guides the host, Hatena, to light. Hatena has obvioulsy stopped feeding, and least through its mouth. It is now swimming to the light, letting the alga photosynthesize its food for both of them.

Doesn't that quality the hatena as a parasite?

Re:Food

[ScrewMaster]

After ingesting the algae, this mouth disappears. Instead, it is replaced by an eyespot from the algae. The eyespot is a light sensing organelle, a very primitive eye that guides algae to light sources. In this case, it also guides the host, Hatena, to light. Hatena has obvioulsy stopped feeding, and least through its mouth. It is now swimming to the light, letting the alga photosynthesize its food for both of them.

Doesn't that quality the hatena as a parasite?

No, I believe you're referring to "Parisians".

Whoa

[dristoph]

This should totally be a creature spell for Magic: The Gathering.

Re:Don't Tell PETA!

[vlad30]

And if you really got worked up, a TIME CUBE reference wouldn't've been too hard, you educated stupid one-dimensional DULLARD.

Not TIME CUBE , Time Tunnel S01E28 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0723775/ Dont worry we'll win, just wait till sunset

Alternatively we might have to watch out for Carrots http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0636227/

OT, but just FYI

[Shin-LaC]

"Hatena" doesn't really mean "enigma". It's actually an interjection, and a more accurate translation would be something like "Weird!" or "Oh man!".

Re:OT, but just FYI

[OwMyBrain]

"Hatena" doesn't really mean "enigma". It's actually an interjection, and a more accurate translation would be something like "Weird!" or "Oh man!".

"WTF", FTW!

Old news

[PPH]

A food that, when eaten, transforms an agressive predator into a passive life form....

Wedding cake.

Re:Old news

[RockDoctor]

A food that, when eaten, transforms an agressive predator into a passive life form....

A food that, when eaten, transforms an passive life form into a agressive predator ....

There, fixed that for ya.
Or were you talking about the chief bridesmaid?

Re:Old news

[jollyreaper]

A food that, when eaten, transforms an agressive predator into a passive life form....

Wedding cake.

Passive-aggressive life form you mean.

Seen it before

[Anonymous Coward]

This is old new. I'm pretty sure one of these was discovered in around 1998 by Professor Oak. It's called a bulbasaur.

I don't think it's especially weird.

[Ihlosi]

But it's very interesting, nonetheless. The real question is: Does the plant tame the predator, or does the predator domesticate the plant? Btw, no one tagged this story "symbiosis"? I can't seem to tag stories.

Re:I don't think it's especially weird.

[Sulphur]

Hatenazilla : The monster with an identity crisis like a cat in a fishbowl. Giant predator seeks symbiotic relationship with "Sue Xie" plant. Rice optional. Negotionations in progress with Raymond Burr impersonators.

Meh....

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a unicellular organism, even if it's a eukaryote, so it's not very surprising that this would happen. Prokaryotes, which are unicellular but simpler than eukaryotes, have this happen to them a lot with horizontal gene transfer.

Good Show!!!

Time dependence

[Anonymous Coward]

You can always get around the correlation !=> causation or whatever by showing time dependence. So not *everything* depends on blind adherence to correlation... or at least it shouldn't...

why is this different than most corals?

[Uzik2]

A large number of your average corals on the reef do this daily. They both capture plankton and use symbiosis with photosynthetic algae in their bodies.

When one hates haters

[statemachine]

That's amusing, considering that your argument is a correlation vs. causation argument in itself.

I've seen that before...

[Tablizer]

I've seen similar behavior in humans all the time -- it's called "marriage".

Re:Sounds like the foundation for a 5-volume fanta

[sbjornda]

1. Mother eats plant 2. Plant grows inside mother 3. Mother morphs 4. Diametrically opposed sons are born 5. Decades of hilarity ensue

<oblig>
6. Profit!
</oblig>

--
.nosig

cheap wow gold

[Anonymous Coward]

Weekends to peopleig2t mean that they can have a two-day wowgold4europe good rest. For exampleï¼OE people gameusd can go out to enjoy themselves or get meinwowgold together with relatives and friends to talk with each storeingame other or watch interesting video tapes with the speebie whole family.
Everyone spends agamegold weekends in his ownmmofly way. Within two days,some people can relax themselves by listening to musicï¼OE reading novelsï¼OEor watchingogeworld films. Others perhaps are more active by playing basketballï¼OEwimming ormmorpgvip dancing. Different people have different gamesavor relaxations.
I often spend weekends withoggsale my family or my friends. Sometimes my parents take me on a visit to their old friends. Sometimesgamersell I go to the library to study or borrow some books tommovirtex gain much knowledge. I also go to see various exhibition to broadenrpg trader my vision. An excursion to seashore or mountain resorts is my favorite way of spending weekends. Weekends are always enjoyable for me.
igxe swagvault oforu wowgold-usa ignmax wowgoldlive brogame thsale GoldRockU brogame
  swagvault goldsoon oforu igxe thsale