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> Fri, 3 Jun 94 3:33:41 +0500
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> To: protista at net.bio.net> From: kibo at world.std.com (James "Kibo" Parry)
> Subject: I see an urgent need for BIGGER PROTOZOA.
> Message-ID: <Cqt8Ep.Bu1 at world.std.com>
> Reply-To: kibo at world.std.com> Date: Fri, 3 Jun 1994 07:20:48 GMT
Kibo said:
>> Okay, so the ameba Chaos Carolinensis is the world's largest protozoan,
> standing a hefty 1/10mm tall. It looks like a dot to the naked eye.
> Big fat hairy deal! What this world needs is a protozoan big enough to
> not only hold in your hand, but to hold up to the light so you can watch
> all the little internal thingies oozing around with the naked eye.
> Heck, you could even keep this hypthetical Big Protozoan as a pet.
> You could slice it up and have a tasty snack, or you could substitute it
> for the lost beanbag in that old Toss Across(R) game in your attic.
>> Someone needs to breed a really big ameba, and a really big paramecium,
> and a really big euglena. After all, otherwise we'll never know what
> SOUND they make when they crawl around! Do they go "goosh goosh", or
> "slurrrrrrp", or "skritch skritch", or even "whirrrrrr"? Does a paramecium
> with a missing cilium go "99-thump"? WE DON'T KNOW! THEY'RE TOO SMALL!
>> Inagine if you had a euglena the size of a horse so that you could ride it.
> Whipping around at 300 scale miles per hour, you'd be the coolest!
>> Imagine having an ameba you could use as a garbage disposal--twenty
> digestive vacuoles, no waiting!
>> HAVE YOU EVER USED AN AMEBA AS A WATERBED? YOU WILL!
>> Yes, science could provide humanity with an endless source of fun merely
> by figuring out how to make little critters really big. Maybe exposing
> them to an atomic blast will make them grow to enormous proportions,
> like it did to those ants!
>> And although I know it's an algae colony and not a mere protozoan, I'd
> also like to request that the scientific community develop a way of
> making a volvox large enough to use as a geodesic dome. I'm tired of
> living in this darn diatom!
>> -- K.
>Kibo, you sound like you've been hitting the yeast by-product early
this Fri.
But in response:
The giant kelp are brown algae and thus are considered protists;
but if you want a protozoan, the plasmodial stage of Physarum, which
I consider a protozoan ( its neither fungus nor alga), can get big
enough to fill your plate at dinner time. Excallent lightly sauteed
in oil with onions and a little Tobasco sauce as slime-mold jambaliya.
And if you're partial to amebae, we have Pelomyxa palustris from a
pond in MD that get 20x bigger (2-4 mm) than Chaos.
Bon appetite and happy listening.
>
