RE: Time to question bioengineering.
June 22, 2011 at 8:31 pm
(This post was last modified: June 23, 2011 at 1:58 pm by Anomalocaris.)
Before you think further along the lines of the morality of zombies and playing god, I like to call your attention to a remarkable case of bioengineering in nature, performed by a crustacean playing god, ending up with a victim crab being turned into a zombie.
Look up sacculina, a group of barnacles ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacculina ). Like other barnacles, sacculina belongs to a class of creatures which are related to crabs. In their youth they resemble shrimps and swim around, but once they reach adulthood they molt and undergo a metamorphasis turning into a sessile or stationary clam like thing that attaches to some other object. It is this for which barnacles as a group is particularly well known, because as adults they cling to and befoul the bottoms of ships and surfaces of other man-made underwater objects, as well as to rocks, flippers of whales, and other convenient surfaces on which they can attach themselves.
Sacculina adults, however, live differently from other barnacles. They don't cling to ships. Instead they seek out real crabs. Once they find a crab they don’t attach themselves to the carapace of the crab, instead they crawl around on the shrimp's shell until they find a joint on the limb of the crab. When they’ve located a joint, they secret a chemical agent that dissolves a hole through the soft part of the crab’s joint. They Sacculina undergo the first of its several remarkable metamorphasises. The secculina injects a small tendril of undifferentiated cells into the crab's body through the hole. The rest of the sacculina then dies, and falls off. The tendril cells inside the crab then differentiate, and begins to develop into something wholly different. In effect, a highly evolved crustacean juvenile, with differentiated muscle, nervous system, organs, diggestive track, just jetisoned 99% of itself including all of its developed organs, leaving just a handful of stem cells. The stem cell then develop into something whole unrecognizeable as a crustacean.
So far, Sacculina sounds just like a lot of other parasites that invade host body from the outside, such as hook worms that afflict humans. But from here on Saaculina would by your definition start to play god and make zombies.
You see, sacculina does not consume the crab from the inside. Nor does it simply free load off the crab like a normal parasite. Instead, it undergoes a truly remarkable transformation inside the crab’s body – a transformations so incredible that the most ambitious bioengineers can scarcely image it.
While inside the crab, the sacculina tendril turns into a soft bodied, amorphously shaped parasite that sends web of tendrils into every part of the crab’s body. This sacculina now has no differentiated organ in the conventional sense except the reproducive organ, and It secrets hormones that mimic’s the crab’s own hormones in order to interfere with and hijack the crab’s normal biological process. If the crab it entered is male, the sacculina secrets counterfeit crab female sex hormones until the male crab is sterilized and began to exhibit female mating behavior. If the crab it entered is female, it let the crab’s normal mating behavior alone.
But it’s not done. Sacculina also causes the crab it infested to reabsorb its own sex organs. In its place, the sacculina itself grows its own reproductive organ, which eventually emerge from the under the crab’s belly in the form of an orange sac, giving the parasite its name “sacculina”. Once this happens, the sacculina secrets additional hormones that cause the crab to stop its own normal growth. The crab stops molting, and whether originally male or female, the crab now exhibits female grooming behavior that tends not its own, but the sacculina’s reproductive organ.
The natural hatching process of a crab consists of the female finding a high rock and grooming its brood pouch on its abdomen and releasing the fertilized eggs in the water through a bobbing motion. The female crab stirs the water with her claw to aid the flow of the water. When the hatching parasite eggs of the Sacculina are ready to emerge from the brood pouch of Sacculina, the crab performs a similar process. The crab shoots them out through pulses creating a large cloud of parasites. The crab then uses the familiar technique of stirring the water to aid in flowThe male Sacculina looks for a female Sacculina adult on the underside of a crab. He then enters and fertilizes her eggs. The crab (male or female) then cares for the eggs as if they were its own, having been rendered infertile by the parasite.
Once the sacculina enters the crab, the crab never grows, never molts, never reproduce for itself. It even loses the normal ability of a crab to regrow a lost limb. The sacculina hijacks all biological processes and all spare eneregy of the crab to further the interests of the sacculina. The crab becomes literally nothing more than a robot the feeds the sacculina, moves the sacculina around, tends the sacculina's eggs, and protects the sacculina from predators.
So how is this for your predator does not play with prey for reasons other than energy?
Look up sacculina, a group of barnacles ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacculina ). Like other barnacles, sacculina belongs to a class of creatures which are related to crabs. In their youth they resemble shrimps and swim around, but once they reach adulthood they molt and undergo a metamorphasis turning into a sessile or stationary clam like thing that attaches to some other object. It is this for which barnacles as a group is particularly well known, because as adults they cling to and befoul the bottoms of ships and surfaces of other man-made underwater objects, as well as to rocks, flippers of whales, and other convenient surfaces on which they can attach themselves.
Sacculina adults, however, live differently from other barnacles. They don't cling to ships. Instead they seek out real crabs. Once they find a crab they don’t attach themselves to the carapace of the crab, instead they crawl around on the shrimp's shell until they find a joint on the limb of the crab. When they’ve located a joint, they secret a chemical agent that dissolves a hole through the soft part of the crab’s joint. They Sacculina undergo the first of its several remarkable metamorphasises. The secculina injects a small tendril of undifferentiated cells into the crab's body through the hole. The rest of the sacculina then dies, and falls off. The tendril cells inside the crab then differentiate, and begins to develop into something wholly different. In effect, a highly evolved crustacean juvenile, with differentiated muscle, nervous system, organs, diggestive track, just jetisoned 99% of itself including all of its developed organs, leaving just a handful of stem cells. The stem cell then develop into something whole unrecognizeable as a crustacean.
So far, Sacculina sounds just like a lot of other parasites that invade host body from the outside, such as hook worms that afflict humans. But from here on Saaculina would by your definition start to play god and make zombies.
You see, sacculina does not consume the crab from the inside. Nor does it simply free load off the crab like a normal parasite. Instead, it undergoes a truly remarkable transformation inside the crab’s body – a transformations so incredible that the most ambitious bioengineers can scarcely image it.
While inside the crab, the sacculina tendril turns into a soft bodied, amorphously shaped parasite that sends web of tendrils into every part of the crab’s body. This sacculina now has no differentiated organ in the conventional sense except the reproducive organ, and It secrets hormones that mimic’s the crab’s own hormones in order to interfere with and hijack the crab’s normal biological process. If the crab it entered is male, the sacculina secrets counterfeit crab female sex hormones until the male crab is sterilized and began to exhibit female mating behavior. If the crab it entered is female, it let the crab’s normal mating behavior alone.
But it’s not done. Sacculina also causes the crab it infested to reabsorb its own sex organs. In its place, the sacculina itself grows its own reproductive organ, which eventually emerge from the under the crab’s belly in the form of an orange sac, giving the parasite its name “sacculina”. Once this happens, the sacculina secrets additional hormones that cause the crab to stop its own normal growth. The crab stops molting, and whether originally male or female, the crab now exhibits female grooming behavior that tends not its own, but the sacculina’s reproductive organ.
The natural hatching process of a crab consists of the female finding a high rock and grooming its brood pouch on its abdomen and releasing the fertilized eggs in the water through a bobbing motion. The female crab stirs the water with her claw to aid the flow of the water. When the hatching parasite eggs of the Sacculina are ready to emerge from the brood pouch of Sacculina, the crab performs a similar process. The crab shoots them out through pulses creating a large cloud of parasites. The crab then uses the familiar technique of stirring the water to aid in flowThe male Sacculina looks for a female Sacculina adult on the underside of a crab. He then enters and fertilizes her eggs. The crab (male or female) then cares for the eggs as if they were its own, having been rendered infertile by the parasite.
Once the sacculina enters the crab, the crab never grows, never molts, never reproduce for itself. It even loses the normal ability of a crab to regrow a lost limb. The sacculina hijacks all biological processes and all spare eneregy of the crab to further the interests of the sacculina. The crab becomes literally nothing more than a robot the feeds the sacculina, moves the sacculina around, tends the sacculina's eggs, and protects the sacculina from predators.
So how is this for your predator does not play with prey for reasons other than energy?
