Looks like England has worms that can eat toxins, creating the possability of animals someday adapting to what we **** up.
[quote]"These worms seem to be able to tolerate incredibly high concentrations of heavy metals, and the metals seem to be driving their evolution," said lead researcher Mark Hodson of the University of Reading in England.
[URL="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/10/081007-super-worms.html"]Source[/URL]
Hah, who woulda thought. Earthworms would save the world.
I call the name: Earthwormicus Jimicus.
Soon they'll grow to monstrous size and wage war on us for dominance. :(
We can only hope. That'd be a pretty awwwright war.
Yay for worms ^_^
Worms tolerating the heavy metals?
pretty gr1m.
Now to make them like nuclear waste.
Nature finds way, always.
If nothing else it'll just select humanity for extinction.
I don't think it's meant for us to be here anyway. :big_bird:
I remember some nerd creating worms that are able to tolerate digest plastic bags. I believe they even started a rubbish dump area that mixed plastic bags, dirt and worms and then leave it there for months of end and it is then turned into good quality soil, as a result of the worms waste. Pretty interesting if we can upscale these sorts of efforts even further.
I just wonder what we have to look forward to if we actually take use of their "powers". Like what could we benefit from researching it, etc.
Yeah because there have been so many times that I wished I could just chow down on some metal and totally come out without any problems. Think about the waste produced, now in metal form.
It adds a whole new level to hardcore.
Hardcore Metal* Generation
I hear that an earthworm can have five hearts. That means if one heart dies, the creature has four lives to survive. Nature (or Creator) has created a magical smart creature to prevent all life from extinction. I wish I could have five hearts so that living 200 years or longer can be possible.:cool: :eek:
On what grounds do you base that?
Sounds more like it would shorten you life to me.
I could understand if two or three hearts were kept inactive until they were needed, but otherwise they'd all be just as worn out.
It's more than the heart that fails us at higher ages, too.
Indeed.
Wait, did these worms evolve recently or something? Because they adapted pretty fast if that was the case. Though it's no real surprise there's some creature out there that will shape itself to thrive off the **** we've done to the planet. Just kinda figured we'd see that a lot later.
By what I've read, the worms have been evolving over the past 150 years. What's been happening is as the worm's food supplies got tainted with metals, certain traits of the digestive system that were already in some worms got favored over others, eventually wiping out all worms that didn't have that trait. Basically, Natural Selection.
Why it's happening so fast is probably due to how quickly the worm generation cycle is. It's like, what...a week?
Yeah, guess that makes sense. Guess it's just hard to fathom something can evolve and adapt that quick.