Down a Rabbit Hole

Sometimes I feel the way Alice must have felt when she fell down that rabbit hole. As she became smaller, she entered a strange world of curious animals, all who had weird behaviors. 

I spend a good deal of time exploring nature. I have been able to make myself smaller, in a scientific way and, like Alice, I have also encountered some very curious animals with really weird behaviors. There really is a "wonderland", and I have been there.

I didn't need a rabbit hole, only a microscope and some incredible photos taken through professional Electron microscopes. When you look through a microscope it creates the same feeling as making you seem to grow smaller. Whenever I do this, I emerge with a completely different attitude about everything I think I know.

Now just in case this sounds like an old guy merely embroidering his thoughts, let me show you a little of what I mean. Use your mind to make yourself very small so that we can visit a wonderland. Be prepared to suspend your judgment when you meet strange animals and weird situations. You may ask all the questions you want, but don't expect "normal" answers. Ready? Let's go!

You may not be small enough yet. You're seeing the microscopic animals that live and feed on our skin. They certainly are strange, aren't they? 

They're even a little scary, but they are not what we are seeking. Make yourself even smaller - really small.







We will travel to Australia to find the extraordinary mounds built there by colonies of termites. 

The mounds are huge. It takes a lot of termite droppings to build them. Because we are so small, we'll have no trouble going inside the mound. 

There are plenty of termites at work in here. We won't linger - we must make ourselves even smaller. We are going inside one of the termites.

The animal we are looking for lives in the intestinal tract of the termite. What? It's OK, we're in no danger. You know that termites eat wood from rotting trees in the forest, right? - No problem. Let's proceed. 

This is one of the strange little fellows who lives in here. They are swimming all around us down here inside the intestine. It's name is, "Myxotricha Paradoxa" - we'll call him MP. He looks to be a typical protozoan (single cell animal). He swims and darts around really fast, being driven by a bunch of flagella (beating little string-like legs). He's busy devouring the small chewed up bits of wood. The termite could not digest the wood without this little guy.

The flagella all beat in synchrony propelling the creature very fast. Wait a minute! Swimming? Let's look closer. Those little flapping legs seem to be flagella, but they're not. We are in wonderland now. Those are not part of the MP at all. They are completely different animals (spirochetes) who have attached themselves to the MP's body. What we think is a single animal is really two different types of animals working together. 

                             spirochetes

Nobody knows why these visitors decide to attach themselves, but they do it nicely by distributing themselves alongside the others. They aren't really "attached" - they just kinda stay in place. Let's ask them why they are here. They don't respond, but just keep racing away from us. Wait, wait, we've got more questions. Too late, they dash away. Remember, we're in wonderland. These spirochetes have no brains, nor can they speak, but they know why they're there and what they are doing. And they do it in unison like synchronized swimmers. Hmmm, curious.

Well, looking a little further, things get even "curiouser". Inside the MP's body we see millions of other "visitors" floating around with the particles of wood. Making ourselves a little smaller, we see that these are bacteria. They are there to contribute enzymes to help digest the wood. It turns out that the little animal (MP) is really a group of different animals, all working together in harmony. And it's all happening in the dark, inside the intestinal tract of termites, who are busy converting dead trees to loam. They make an enormous contribution to the life cycle of the trees, the forest and the earth itself. 

This is just one more of the miracles that are occurring constantly - not only in our world, but in the worlds beyond our vision. If I were to study and learn all that is possible for a human being to learn, I know that it would only be an iota, relative to all that is out there. I think I now understand what Plato meant when, after having studied for a lifetime he said, "Now I know that I do not know"

OK, our trip to wonderland is over. We can now grow back to our regular size again and return to the "real" world. Excuse me?