Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/07/27/frozen-earthworm-revived-after.html
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Ok, not my favorite movie but you asked for it:
Do worms remember their dreams? That’s a looong sleep.
Those are roundworms (nematodes) not earthworms (annelids). Those are very different beasts with something like 750 million years since a common ancestor (source: http://www.timetree.org/). Nematodes live everywhere and are hard as nails and do things like going into suspended animation - earthworms are a lot bigger, more complex and much less freezable.
</taxonomic pedantry>
They dreamed they were civilized humans, typing comments on a thing called a blog…
I wouldn’t call it pedantry. Thanks for clearing it up/adding info. I knew nematodes were hella everywhere and robust.
Water Bear: “We’re getting the band back together!”
“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” — Ian Malcolm
"Oh, they’re so cute! And look - this one has a virus that’s - aaaack! (thud)
Anything that can survive getting spaced for 10 days is definitely going to be around for the reunion…
This sort of already HAS been covered in a high-concept movie (and book): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Smilla's_Feeling_for_Snow
Methuselah ain’t got **** on these guys.
And I’m certain that nothing catastrophically horrible could come from reviving a creature that was wriggling around in the earth 42,000 years ago. These scientists are smart guys. The smartest. Simply the best! We’ll have no trouble here.
Nope nope nope. Nuke it from orbit.
(yes, yes, alien vs. ancient earthworm, but I can guarantee you the end result is the same)
The world continues and yet I am frozen. For years I dreamt of eating, the food was all around me, and yet I could not move. As the years turned to decades I cursed my strength, why keep me alive just to sit! My thoughts turned wild: I was no longer worm, I was dirt itself forced to lay forever in the bowels of the earth. Perhaps it was purgatory, punishment from my sins before something else. Perhaps it was worse. I begged for the end, to cease pondering this endless torment. For days I could forget I exist lost in transcendental nothingness, but then the cold. The cold was always there. The persistent chill that blocked all exit or escape and pulled me back.
My earlier taxonomic pedantry really matters here - a hell of a lot of nematodes are parasitic, so hurry those nukes up…
I was thinking more along the lines of Ice, the episode where Mulder and Sculley find those lethally-aggressive parasitic worms in Alaska, but at least someone was on the ball with an X-Files reference!