If the realities of your arachnid housemates creep you out, take comfort in the fact that we’re far from alone. It also begs the question: where does a symbiont end and a human begin? But it is an extinction in extreme slow motion, one whose contours are illuminating parts of the process we have never seen before. For reasons we will come to shortly, the genome of the human follicle mite is falling apart, setting them on an evolutionary trajectory in which they may be doomed to extinction. Laissez les bons temps roulez!Īs it turns out, the clearly decaying human follicle mite has the smallest number of functional genes of any known joint-legged animal (and its genome is just over half the size of that of a tiny animal called Trichoplax that is nothing more than a millimeter-wide gliding sheet of cells). They’ve also lost the gene that makes melatonin, but no problem - they’ve just outsourced it by freeloading on ours. Oh, and in addition to that tiny mix-up, and the fact their legs are running on absolute minimum thrust, there’s also the small matters of the complete loss of genes that protect them from UV light, the ones that tell them to wake up when it’s light outside, and something like, oh, 27 DNA repair genes. In order to complete his mission, the male has to position himself in a very un-missionary position under the female. Instead, they have migrated to his back, in the position of a shark’s dorsal fin. There’s only one small issue: due to a hardly noticeable loss of a mite developmental gene, the male’s genitalia are no longer located in the usual spot. Although, it should be added, because you have many mites, this is probably happening somewhere, and possibly multiple special somewheres, every night. Even if your love life has hit a dry spell, rest assured your follicle mites never lack for partners or libido, and reproduce themselves on your face - and potentially many other exciting body parts - with vigorous abandon roughly every two weeks. Yet that is more than sufficient to the rice-shaped arachnids’ purpose: finding a mate, acrobatically clinging to one of your hairs while in flagrante delicto all … night … long (I mean, Rome wasn’t built in a day), then retiring to your pores to lay their eggs and sleep it off as the sun rises. In spite of the legs’ obvious shortcomings, they somehow still manage to power (if such a word can be used) mites toward connubial bliss at a rate of around 12 millimeters per hour, which, in automotive terms, is 0.00000746 miles per hour. Not three muscles, three cells - one per segment. Their comically microscopic, knob-like limbs are operated by three lonely muscle cells. since the sculpture shines, it arouses curiosity from great distance, only by getting closer to the piece its detailed painted patterns can be spotted.Each night, the mites that live in your face - arachnids whose kin include ticks and spiders - pick their way out of your pores on eight stumpy legs with lovin’ on their minds. ‘by combining and abstracting visually significant characteristics also of other living forms, the art piece points to the fascination about life as a phenomenon that is difficult to grasp. ‘the stained glass sculpture is primarily inspired by the idea of a giant floating fluorescent amoeba,’ medicus says. The form of the sculpture is derived from the cell structure of an amoeba meticulous ornamentation - from kandinsky-eque patterns to fish-like scales - are abstracted and painted within the colorful frames, lending the project a distinct sense of craftsmanship and character. upon closer inspection, an intricate network of symbols and motifs can be seen inscribed into the glass sheets. hovering in mid air is a sculptural ‘amoeba’, conceived and fabricated by innsbruck-based artist thomas medicus. derived from the cell structure of an amoeba - an organism with the uncanny ability to alter its shape - the irregularly-formed art object has been meticulously crafted from vibrant panes of semi-opaque glass, provided by local manufacturer tiroler glasmalerei.Ī strange and surreal sight subtly glows in the depth of the woodsĪt a distance, the asymmetrical entity is visible as a prismatic and otherworldly creature within its context. In the shadowy darkness of a densely vegetated landscape, a strange and surreal sight subtly glows in the depth of the woods. Thomas medicus sets surreal stained glass amoeba sculpture in the woods
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