Tiny Tentacled Microorganisms Named After Cthulu

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Tiny Tentacled Microorganisms Named After Cthulu

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday April 4, 2013 @03:05PM from the on-his-slide-dead-cthulhu-waits-dreaming dept.

First time accepted submitter mebates writes "Two newly discovered protists, found in the guts of termites, were named after monstrous cosmic entities featured in Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos as an ode to the sometimes strange and fascinating world of the microbe. From the article: 'The single-cell protists, Cthulhu macrofasciculumque and Cthylla microfasciculumque, help termites digest wood. The researchers decided to name them after monstrous cosmic entities featured in Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos as an ode to the sometimes strange and fascinating world of the microbe. 'When we first saw them under the microscope they had this unique motion, it looked almost like an octopus swimming,' says UBC researcher Erick James, lead author of the paper describing the new protists, published in the online journal PLoS ONE.'"

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Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtaghn! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-04-04 15:08 · Score: 5, Funny

The Great Old Ones shall not be mocked!
1. Re:Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtaghn! by Samantha+Wright · 2013-04-04 15:14 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  And yet they already have been. If Slashdot headlines defined the evolution of English, by this time next week all "H"s will have disappeared.
  
  --
  Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
2. Re:Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtaghn! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-04-04 15:17 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons, even death may die.
3. Re:Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtaghn! by game+kid · 2013-04-04 16:21 · Score: 2
  
  The h hasn't disappeared!
  
  Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtaghn! (Score:1)
  
  See? It was merely moved to the last word of GP's subject, doubtless by the unshakeable will and inestimable power of Cthulhu.
  
  --
  You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
4. Re:Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtaghn! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-04-04 17:56 · Score: 1
  
  I wish Lovecraft was alive so we could ask him what the heck a "strange aeon" is.
5. Re:Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtaghn! by EvilIdler · 2013-04-04 18:27 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  It's whenever new music no longer makes sense to you.
6. Re:Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtaghn! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-04-04 21:06 · Score: 1
  
  I imagine it as a period of time measured by a complex number, whose length is equal to 1000 years (hence aeon). For example, 1000*(sqrt(0.5) + sqrt(-0.5)) years?
7. Re:Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtaghn! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-04-04 22:22 · Score: 0
  
  Just as long as they don't name it after he who should not be named, we will be fine.
8. Re:Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtaghn! by hawkinspeter · 2013-04-04 23:25 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Jeremy Clarkson?
  
  --
  You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
9. Re:Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtaghn! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-04-05 01:35 · Score: 0
  
  Jeremy Clarkson?
  Kelly...
10. Re:Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtaghn! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-04-05 01:57 · Score: 0
  
  It's whenever new music no longer makes sense to you.
  I has a sad.
  Erm, I mean, damnit, I'm old!
  Kindly removeth thyself from my greensward.
11. Re:Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtaghn! by RabidReindeer · 2013-04-05 01:59 · Score: 1
  
  I wish Lovecraft was alive so we could ask him what the heck a "strange aeon" is.
  Angled Time, of course!
12. Re:Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtaghn! by dunkelfalke · 2013-04-05 02:07 · Score: 1
  
  Then the strange aeon started before I was born.
  
  --
  "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
tentacles rule by Anonymous Coward · 2013-04-04 15:21 · Score: 0

What is dead can never die!!!!!!!
fuck. wrong forum.
1. Re:tentacles rule by Arancaytar · 2013-04-05 00:08 · Score: 1
  
  "...but rises again, harder and stronger."
  I think you mixed up Lovecraft with George R.R. Martin just there. :P
The Old Ones... by Genda · 2013-04-04 15:29 · Score: 4, Insightful

Will drive you mad... look at how many times the phrase "featured in Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos as an ode to the sometimes strange and fascinating world of the microbe." is used in the story??? MAD?!!!!
Indeed, the Great Old Ones shall not be mocked! Anyone got some tartar sauce?
Not your father's delicate psyche by Okian+Warrior · 2013-04-04 15:32 · Score: 4, Insightful

I've often wondered if people of the modern age would be as affected by an encounter with these creatures as the people of grandfather's time.
Raised on decades of science fiction, horror, twilight zone and outer limits, such an encounter would be grave and dangerous, but perhaps not quite as sanity-altering as it once was. We have context for comparison, the unusual would seem less... incomprehensible.
We're also starting to unravel the scientific basis of these unfathomable entities. I'll just leave this here.
1. Re:Not your father's delicate psyche by Giant+Electronic+Bra · 2013-04-04 15:54 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  I dunno about that. Have you ever encountered something truly CREEPY? I'm not a real high strung person, but I can tell you that for sure you it is pretty surprising how disturbed you can become in the right (wrong) circumstances. I'm skeptical we're any better at handling these things than reasonably educated and experienced people of the past. It may be true that more members of today's society are more used to being exposed to new things, but I think you'd find that most people are still kinda not that far from what they were like 100 years ago.
  
  --
  "Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
2. Re:Not your father's delicate psyche by DerekLyons · 2013-04-04 16:42 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Raised on decades of science fiction, horror, twilight zone and outer limits, such an encounter would be grave and dangerous, but perhaps not quite as sanity-altering as it once was.
  The people of our grandfathers time, and beyond, were raised on a steady diet of some fairly creepy and horrifying ghost and creature stories... there's much more to the old world than Han Christian Andersen. At any rate, encountering something creepy in real life is *very* different from 'encountering' it on the big or little screen or between the pages of a book.
3. Re:Not your father's delicate psyche by AnotherAnonymousUser · 2013-04-04 18:15 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Of course, you can add a whole new layer of horror even to your iPad these days, it seems.
  
  https://www.etsy.com/listing/119115231/necronomicon-ipad-ereader-cover?
4. Re:Not your father's delicate psyche by Anonymous Coward · 2013-04-04 18:22 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Reading about a zombie/monster or watching a movie about them and meeting one face to face is quite different. I can watch a movie where people are being shot at and think it is cool. I have, unfortunately, been in a situation where I was shot at and it was not cool... At all. My friend was actually hit (in the leg) and he did not find it cool either.
5. Re:Not your father's delicate psyche by nickersonm · 2013-04-04 18:56 · Score: 2
  
  I found Lovecraft's cosmic horrors to generally be interesting aliens or alien artifacts. I always feel sorry for the Old Ones when I read At the Mountains of Madness.
6. Re:Not your father's delicate psyche by laejoh · 2013-04-04 22:48 · Score: 1
  
  Been married, once :)
7. Re:Not your father's delicate psyche by hawkinspeter · 2013-04-04 23:23 · Score: 2
  
  I recently tried to get Open University software running properly on Windows 7. Does that count as truly creepy? (I still wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat with fleeting dreams of arcane compatibility modes and tentacles).
  
  --
  You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
8. Re:Not your father's delicate psyche by bentcd · 2013-04-05 00:24 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  I've often wondered if people of the modern age would be as affected by an encounter with these creatures as the people of grandfather's time.
  The underlying theme in the Lovecraft universe is that the Elder Gods not only seem incomprehensible but that they actually are incomprehensible. The more you study them and their nature, the more your own internal ordering of the universe will break down and in the end your understanding of the universe is so different from the observed universe the rest of us experience we will recognize you as insane.
  You cannot escape this simply by being used to weird things: The Elders Gods aren't just weird, they are completely wrong and yet they exist. Trying to reconcile this with the observed universe leads to madness because the two cannot be reconciled.
  
  --
  sigs are hazardous to your health
9. Re:Not your father's delicate psyche by emho24 · 2013-04-05 04:23 · Score: 1
  
  Now that is just crazy talk
  
  --
  You must gather your party before venturing forth.
10. Re:Not your father's delicate psyche by Comrade+Ogilvy · 2013-04-05 04:45 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Exactly. One of the implicit assumptions is that a healthy human mind is fundamentally incapable of understanding important fundamental truths about the universe. It is simply the limits of our biology.
  Those who attempt to transcend these limits become, at best, insane, or, if genuinely successful in pursuing this path, something inhuman in every pejorative sense of the word. To transcend human biology in this manner requires giving up every kind ethical idea the human mind understands, as a down payment.
  Getting used to the merely weird is ultimately no defense. The terrible things that really matter are inherently destructive to human minds. As a pedestrian example, no one really gets used to being in the thick of WWI trench warfare. Some adopt mental strategies and call on moral reserves that slows the rate of their decline, but decline is inexorable. Given enough time, everyone becomes a permanent mental basket case from trench warfare, some merely sooner than others.
  It is worth noting that the Great War weighed heavily on the minds of Lovecraft's generation of artists. For some, that war shattered the belief in the inevitable progress of the human race built on the foundation of Enlightenment. Perhaps the human race as moral creatures peaked in 1913, and the lessons of the war were pebbles in the oncoming avalanche of future horrors? That is the emotional playground Lovecraft danced in, when writing the Mythos tales.
11. Re:Not your father's delicate psyche by Anonymous Coward · 2013-04-05 06:07 · Score: 1
  
  And indeed you should! Them being great evils vastly more powerful than humans doesn't change that Cthulhu & co are refugees from even greater evils that are in turn vastly more powerful than them.
  The usually overlooked central theme of Lovecraft --the very theme that makes it genuine horror rather than monster stories-- is the premise that greater intelligence and power unavoidably requires greater evil as a prerequisite.
  Lovecraft's stories are/were his personal cry for help, he doesn't want his premise to be true but fears it has to be true. Not just that God has to be the ultimate evil but that everyone and everything more intelligent and powerful than yourself must be more evil by their very nature.
  Was Lovecraft right or wrong? Therein lies the horror and also interesting cues to understanding the societal implications and reasons for superstitions and religion in entirely different cultures, what they have in common and why superstitions involving powerful evils become valuable psychological tools both as coping mechanisms and for social control (thus more widespread and common) the more brutal and debased a culture and/or society and/or system and/or religion is/are.
  The above should also help put the allegations of Lovecraft's anti-semitism into context and perspective.
12. Re:Not your father's delicate psyche by Giant+Electronic+Bra · 2013-04-05 08:53 · Score: 1
  
  Oh, well, then you know all about what lurks in R'lyeh...
  
  --
  "Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
13. Re:Not your father's delicate psyche by laejoh · 2013-04-06 03:37 · Score: 1
  
  Ph'nglui Mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.
The diversity of life is simply amazing. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-04-04 15:48 · Score: 0

All praise the Creator, and his noodly tentacled goodness.
Welcome! by Cyfun · 2013-04-04 15:59 · Score: 2

Well I, for one, welcome our new microscopic alien overlords!

--
In Soviet Russia, dot slashes YOU!
Tentacles and microorgasms... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-04-04 16:08 · Score: 1

sounds vaguely Japanese
I figured it out... by michael_rendier · 2013-04-04 16:11 · Score: 2

the reason we haven't found 'The Great Old One' is because he's not in a singlular spot...but i'm willing to bet if there was a 'family reunion' of these little critters...if there was a ba-jillian come together...we may just have some sort of 'celestial alignment'...creating peculiar geometries within the mind...

--
There are three kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't.
Nuts? by BigBunion · 2013-04-04 16:16 · Score: 1, Funny

Am I the only one who thought this was an article about tiny testicles?
1. Re:Nuts? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-04-04 16:41 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Don't be so self-centred. Not everything is about you.
HASTUR! HASTUR! HASTUR! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-04-04 16:50 · Score: 0

Thou Shalt Not Speak Of It!
Monstrous? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-04-04 16:59 · Score: 0

I thought 'cyclopean' would have been a much better adjective to use in this setting.
The time is now! by techno-vampire · 2013-04-04 18:41 · Score: 3, Funny

The stars are right! We cannot be denied! Our termites will destroy everything that opposes us, as long as it's made out of wood!

--
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Much better picture by wonkey_monkey · 2013-04-04 19:34 · Score: 1

http://cdn.uproxx.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/gammasquadcthulhumicrobe.jpg

--
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
1. Re:Much better picture by jellomizer · 2013-04-05 01:16 · Score: 1
  
  If you see it, it will drive you insane.
  Roll a terror check.
  
  --
  If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
2. Re:Much better picture by RabidReindeer · 2013-04-05 01:59 · Score: 1
  
  If you see it, it will drive you insane.
  Roll a terror check.
  I have no problem envisioning Richard Billington on his tower in the Misquacamacus chatting up these things.
  Er, "holding strange converse with these beings".
  Remember: Yog-Sothoth is the Gate! Yog-Sothoth is the Key! Ïa! Ïa!
Japan is already making a porn out of it by Anonymous Coward · 2013-04-04 20:53 · Score: 0

Pixelated and all.
cute, now... by cstacy · 2013-04-04 21:00 · Score: 2

They're cute little tentacled microorganisms now. Oh yeah "Ooh, aah", that's how it always starts. But then there's running and screaming.
1. Re:cute, now... by mjwalshe · 2013-04-05 05:14 · Score: 1
  
  And if your lucky Bob Howard or that Cute British Redhead from the laundry service puts you out your misery before the black chamber gets its paws and tentacles on you :-)
  
  I wonder if the professors are Charlie Stoss fans :-)
Serve him by puddingebola · 2013-04-04 23:32 · Score: 1

In the gut of a termite at R'lyeh, dead Cthulu waits dreaming.
instant karma by Anonymous Coward · 2013-04-05 00:50 · Score: 1

Great ... cue the Lovecraft nuts who think a Cthulhu reference is arbitrarily needed in every comment thread, and the mods who think that every Cthulhu reference must be modded up.
Oh no... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-04-05 02:03 · Score: 0

I've seen enough hentai to know where this is going.
Have you ever encountered something truly CREEPY? by Dareth · 2013-04-05 02:48 · Score: 1

Yes. Norman Bate's mother is super HOT!
Now that is just plain creepy!

--

I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Science Fiction? by Baavgai · 2013-04-05 05:08 · Score: 1

"Tiny octopus-like microorganisms named after science fiction monsters"
It's kind of hard to continue reading after that. If you don't grok the difference between science fiction and fantasy, how can I take anything you have to say about science seriously?
1. Re:Science Fiction? by mjwalshe · 2013-04-05 05:17 · Score: 1
  
  well the Cthulhu mythos mixes the two genres and the laundry service is definitely SF
2. Re:Science Fiction? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-04-05 06:21 · Score: 1
  
  1. You shouldn't take anything /. writes about science (or anything else) seriously. This is why there is no editing.
  2. The only reason to read /. is for the comments. This is why you should consider reading at -1 (scrolling is easy).
  3. The only reason to open a "news" item is to find the kind of comments and/or quarrels you expect and want, choose accordingly. No guarantees.
  4. Welcome to /. :)
  5. Nice comment! Someone should mod you up.
Wow. by Okian+Warrior · 2013-04-05 08:45 · Score: 1

Very well written - thanks for that.