Tiny Tentacled Microorganisms Named After Cthulu

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.'"

Comments

Re:Not your father's delicate psyche

[AnotherAnonymousUser]

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?

Re:Not your father's delicate psyche

[bentcd]

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.