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Cake day: February 21st, 2024

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  • WolfLink@lemmy.mltoScience Memes@mander.xyzviruses
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    5 months ago

    For reproduction purposes, many parasites require a specific host to reproduce in. An interesting example is a worm that mind controls a snail and gets itself eaten by a bird, and then reproduces in the bird. Surprisingly, both the snail and the bird survive this process. (Granted, the difference between this and a virus is the virus uses the RNA decoding infrastructure in the infected cell to reproduce itself, while a parasite just is adapted to reproducing in the environment of the hosts body, but uses its own cells to do the reproduction).

    However, there are many, many examples in nature of some essential task (often some part of the energy production/absorption process) that are done by a different organism. Some particularly interesting examples:

    • there are a handful of animals that eat plants, absorb the chloroplasts, and use those to do photosynthesis

    • In most animals, even in humans, a lot of the digestion process is done by bacteria living in your digestive tract. Some illnesses are caused by issues with the digestive tract bacteria, such as them dying out.

    There are other animals adapted to living in environments or using things produced by other organisms. Hermit crabs get their name from their behavior of borrowing shells created by other organisms.

    Really the only organism that can truly live “by itself” would probably be something like algae.









  • WolfLink@lemmy.mltoScience Memes@mander.xyzBig Science
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    5 months ago

    While conflicts of interest can and do exist, a lot of, if not most, science is done by grad students who are just trying to get their degree and are really there because they are passionate about discovering new things more than anything else.





  • The thing is, we either get 2 more years of Biden, or 2 more years of Trump. Besides this one issue I don’t think Biden has been that bad. Trump and more broadly republicans have publicly declared their intent to move the country towards a dictatorship.

    In the election 2 years from now, if Biden is the president, we will have an interesting primary to see who is the next DNC candidate. If Trump is president, I’m not sure the country will be in a state where that’s possible (not to mention that if it doesn’t get that bad, the DNC will likely put Biden on the ballot regardless of what happens this year).