Dr. Ben Larson

And that's required to sort of flip the full transition to the super giant state.

And so that might be partly limiting the number.

And so it may be that there's some regular probability of the cells trying to become cannibals and only a few really make it.

So this was during field work in the Caribbean on this island called Curacao.

It's about 30 miles north of Venezuela.

And so I had done some extensive sampling around the island looking for interesting sites.

But one place I had not sampled was the lab itself.

And so these super giants actually came from a filter system on these water tanks that pump in water from the sea and fill up these tables that people keep animals in.

And there's this disgusting filter and scraped that.

And lo and behold, I found some cannibals on that filter sample.

So that's where they came.

Yeah, exactly.

And for any, you know, amateur microbe hunters out there, I would highly recommend fish tank filters as a great place to find interesting cells and perhaps violent cells as well.

Well, OK, so I think a lot about cell decision making and in a few different ways.

So, you know, one thing I will add that may even further challenge basic assumptions about how cells work is that there are some ciliates that have a well-documented capacity to learn.

So there is one, for example, called Stentor, and this is a cell, you poke it and it'll contract into a little ball.

And it turns out you keep poking that cell and it will eventually learn to ignore you.

But it's not that it's just tired.

You know, if you give it a different aversive cue, it'll still be able to contract.

Or if you poke it harder, it'll actually contract.