The Baboon Congress

An Ode To The Nematode

110 Comments

Today is my birthday, and I am determined to relax, no matter how much work it takes.
Fortunately I have great help from people like my good friend Jim of Clark’s Grove, who wrote today’s guest post. With a few forthright words about nematodes, Jim has helped me understand my true role in the universe and has placed my birthday in its proper context. To anyone who says “host” is not a decent job description, I say, ‘Pal, we’re all hosts.’

Here’s Jim’s post:

I suspect that many people know a lot about something which is not widely known by most other people. I am thinking about unusual information that might be gained through professional training, or from involvement in a hobby, or by somehow gaining access to unusual information. I happen to know quite a bit about nematodes, a group organisms that I think are a mystery to the general public. My knowledge of nematodes came mostly from my study of these organisms as a graduate student. I would like to share some of the information I have about these very significant and severely overlooked creatures with the hope that you will share information about something that you think has been largely ignored.

Nematodes, which are also known as round worms, are the most numerous multicellular animal on earth. There are some single celled organisms that outnumber nematodes, but nematodes have exceeded all other animals with more than one cell when counting the total number of individuals. If you removed all the soil and water from the earth and left the nematodes, the large populations of nematodes found everywhere would show you where the soil and water was previously located. Most nematodes are very small, only a millimeter or two in length, although you might have seen some of the larger parasitic ones that are several inches long in the stools of your pets. Some whales contain parasitic nematodes that are more than 20 feet long.

A Nematode with a Nematode Inside.

Nematodes parasitize just about everything including all kinds of animals and a wide range of plants. People suffer from many kinds of nematode parasites; including pin worms, hook worms, and the worms that cause trichinosis which you can get if you don’t do a good job of cooking pork. In fact, there are even some nematodes that are parasitic in other nematodes. If you look closely at the picture I provided you will see two nematodes because this is a picture of a nematode with a parasitic nematode in its body cavity. I came across this parasitized nematode during my study of free living nematodes found in soil. The drawing was done with ink on scratch board following instructions for making nematode drawings that came from a famous nematologist, Gerald Thorne. Thorne was very devoted to the study of nematodes which he was sure would be found in soil samples from the moon. He was certain of this because he knew they are found everywhere on earth.

I got started in nematology by doing a research project on plant parasitic nematodes, some of which can severely damage plants. However, most of my efforts in nematology were centered on the taxonomy of a group of free-living nematodes which led me to discover and describe a dozen new species of nematodes. Most people who work on the taxonomy of larger organisms would not expect to discover such a large number of new species. When it comes to nematodes, it is not hard to find numerous new species because most of the existing species have not been described.

I have attempted to dazzle you with some information about the wondrous group of organisms called nematodes. You probably weren’t aware of the huge number of these organisms hidden in soil and water everywhere and also found as parasites in or on many animals and plants. In fact, you might have harbored or still be harboring some of them, yourself. I think I was infested with pin worms when I was a kid. In those days many school children suffered from infestations of these very small worms. I wonder if you have information about something that is unusual or not well known to the general public.

Are you familiar with something that is being ignored?

110 thoughts on “An Ode To The Nematode”

  1. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    Happy Birthday Dale–hope you have a relaxed day!

    Meanwhile, familiarity with something ignored. Hmmmm. This may be a topic that I think about all day. The trouble with that on my work days is that when I think about the topic and come up with something, I often can’t come on-line to tell anyone. Then in the evening when I am free to post it, i forgot it!

    Right now I can only think of one answer–a topic that irritated me all the time in the past: the eat local and organic movement. For years I composted my garbage and mulched with organic material. I gardened and ate my own stuff, sometimes canning my tomatoes. People just thought I was odd or quaint (if they noticed at all)–why do that when you can buy anything? Now it is THE THING TO DO. Now I am not sure if I like being very trendy when this was ignored for so very long.

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    1. Jacque, I think it is great that you have all those years of growing your own food and doing it organicly. I think it is irritating when so many people suddenly discover something that you have worked at for years and were told was a waste of time.

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    2. if you require others to congradualte you on the thing you have chosen to please yourself you are screwed. enjoy your enjoyment for its own sake and appreciate being the pro form dover whether it is applauded or not. you can be your own fan club and copost that old nasty suff in the rotting corner of your yard even if it goes unnoticed.
      by the way i think your composting and growing the vegies and stuff is great. a model for us all. the idea that everyone else gets it should be proof that your brain is way out in front of the masses. now that you have tackled a slice of subsistance farming get to work on world peace and energy sustainability.

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      1. I’ll get right on it.

        BTW, I never expected anyone to notice what I was doing. It was just so irritating when the media finally noticed this stuff and came on like it was NEW. Agriculture has been around a while.

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    3. Jacque, I feel the same way about knitting. I’ve done it since I was in third grade-even through the long drought years when all you could get to work with was Red Heart SuperSaver.

      Having done something all along that is now trendy just means you have been a keeper of the flame all this while.

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      2. My mother says that every age thinks they invented sex. I have two nieces-in-law who think they invented child-rearing (one of them is close to inventing child abuse). Now they think they invented knitting.

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      3. They need to be introduced to Eliazbeth Zimmermann, the mother of us all. She never claimed to invent anything in knitting, she always felt anything one innovated was just retrieving something from the collective sub-conscious with your fingers.

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  2. Jim – thank you for enlightening me about nematodes. Yours was one of the most interesting technical pieces I’ve read in a long time. No, seriously, I mean it. ARE THERE nematodes on the moon? We’re all wondering this, of course.

    I am aware of the benefits of play dough in the classroom for youngsters. It fosters creativity and has kinesthetic value and helps with fine motor control. It’s been ignored and rejected in recent years (at least where I work) because there’s no proven evidence that its use increases test scores. What a load of nematode infested you know what!

    Happy Birthday Dale! Hope you’re sleeping in. If you lived in my neighborhood you’d have a hard time with that because when I got back at 5:05 a.m. from taking my sister to the airport, I accidentally hit the wrong button on her keyless and her horn went off for about 30 seconds.

    Thanks Kids, for the b-day wishes yesterday. I’d especially like to thank Tim for the pretty-good- looking, old-broad compliment. That was surprisingly generous of him considering how he covered my head with his newspaper when I sat next to him at RockBend.

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    1. Happy birthday a day late, Donna. Keep using the Play-doh – it is good for kids (and grown-ups). If anyone asks how it is improving test skills you can tell them it is increasing their creative abilities which is a linchpin to good problem solving (and will come in handy on those pesky math and science tests). Every kid should have some to play with for 10 minutes before a standardized test to help relax them and focus their mind. (I can keep coming up with more juicy rationalizations – but I’m sure you have thought of these and plenty more.)

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    2. i remember hearing once that when we are kids we color and average of an hour a day or something like that. i was amazed at how i had forgotten how peacful and theraputic coloring was. playdough same thing i suspect. captain kangaroo therapy. don’t forget the blunt nose scissors
      and i ythought you looked especially good with that newspaper tilted just that certain way. oo la la

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    3. Happy birthday to you a day late, Donna. I don’t think they have found any nematodes on the moon. I think the nematologist that thought they would be found there was a little off the mark on that. Nematodes have managed to find a way to live just about any place. However, they would probably need little space suits to stay alive on the moon.

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      1. Love the image of the little space suits, Jim, and also “load of nematode infested you know what”, Donna.

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      2. There’s an idea for a TV pilot. Nematodes In Space: A heroic band of nematodes explores the universe searching for evil alien species that are marauding and killing their neighbors. They infest the evil aliens and transform them into peaceful and sociable symbionts.

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      3. Back when the s&h was learning things like multiplication tables, we would take long walks and make up stories that had math problems in them. They were usually long, draw-out episodic tales involving scientist or explorer Pigs. There were also characters known as the Space Worms that came up quite a bit.

        I’ll have to tell him about the nematodes in space and their little space suits. He will be pleased to know about them.

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      4. Can we substitute goats for pigs ? I think goats in space with their suits may enable an occasional space suit free respite in our fantastic voyage plot within a plot . Who was going to sew the costumes?

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    5. Happy Yester-Birthday to you Donna, and thanks to everyone for the good wishes already read and yet-to-be-read. I can easily imagine that play-dough is focusing and calming to exactly the same degree that setting off your sister’s car alarm at 5:05 am is NOT.
      For my celebration today, my wife is taking me out for ice cream! That is a happy thought, and thanks to Jim, I’m going to see if they have any Nematode Swirl.

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  3. Dale,sending you felicitations on your birthday. In your honour I will spare you my incredibly off-key rendition of the birthday song. I will instead imagine John McCutcheon viciting the Trail and leading us all in a chorus of “Cut the Cake, “followed by a chance to gather at the chairs and tables scattered all over the Trail. Enjoy!

    For the moment I am holding back my inner Cliff Claven-I know waaaayyy too much about tooo many things that are ignored!

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  4. In the words of Pooh Bear, as written by Owl and translated by A.A. Milne, “HIPY PAPY BTHETHDTH THUTHDA BTHUTHDY!” Hope it’s a fabulously relaxing day, Dale. With cake. And ice cream.

    What am I familiar with that is being ignored?…oh dear – I’m afraid at this hour of the day all of my front-of-brain accessible knowledge is for mundane things like making coffee, getting myself and Daughter out the door, fretting about whether I will once again this fall gain in-depth knowledge of Daughter’s itchy scalp while I scout out small invaders (which last year at Daughter’s school might have given the nematodes a run for their money). BBC folks can tell you I will natter on about darn near anything – but ignored info? Heck I dunno. Liability and legal concerns about any number of events that might happen in a retail store?…

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  7. the stuff i know is a mile wide and an inch deep. i a not terribly knowledgable on a subject but while we are talking about what i dont know i can have a great time talking about numerous other things. jim those nematodes are memory jarring. my brother brought up a wile back the memory of our mom lining us all up on the kitchen floor and looking at our butts with a flashlight for pin worms. 1963 ish somethong about nasty red medicine to get rid of them. i had a sales manager who was a technical expert in the swimming pool chemical industry and one day while we wer waiting for an appointment i was asking how he got int this line of work and he explained how in school he studied science and his favorite subject was parasites. i commented this was possibly more information about him than i cared to be aware of and we laughed and that is about all there was to the story but now i can add you to my memory bank when i think of parasites. it si fasinating what we find fasinating

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    2. I remember all the kids in my family having to take some incredibly foul-tasting medicine that we called “worm medicine.” I don’t remember the color, but oh boy, the taste was incredibly nasty. *Shudder.*

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    3. Okay, thanks for those memories of worms, tim. While I was more interested in the free-living nematodes, I can now see that the parasitic ones are the real “show stoppers”.

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  8. its dales bithday and we on the trial
    have to be thankful to our trail boss dale
    he wakes up each morning know he has attended
    to all of our blog needs real and pretended
    we look to our leader for the days inspiration
    he even makes sure it covered on his vacation
    hes taken us in like orphans in the rain
    who suffer from morning show withdrawls and the pain
    and even without the great music we thrive
    hes figured a way to keep the feeling alive
    its an intimate group that gather each day
    with thoughts on the topic we have something to say
    dr babooner bubby and officer rafferty
    have made many appearances and given us a laugherty
    thanks for the hosting of this parasitic group
    its a mish mash of people in this baboon soup
    an wonder mixture of folks gather daily
    and provide such a pleasure at being baboon traily
    so thanks birthday boy its a good job you’ve done
    the trail is quite thankful that you are the one

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  10. Good morning to all,

    I am glad that Dale was able to make use of my guest blog so that he could work at relaxing on his birthday. I don’t know if he is a host to any nematodes. I think he is a very good host of this blog and, of course, we know about his skill as a radio show host. Also, I want to thank Dale for helping me with writing this blog. I did the writing, but Dale helped me by pointing out that an earlier draft of this piece was kind of dry and needed to be spiced up.

    A big happy birthday to you, Dale, and many thanks for hosting us.

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      1. I don’t, for sure, about the right choice of spices. I always think anything is better with hot pepper and maybe some garlic and probably basil. Nematode mole sounds good.

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  14. What do I know about something that is being ignored? The only thing I can think of is all the dirt and filth in my house that is ignored by everybody who lives here.

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    1. years ago when i was bitching about not having enough time to clean the house, a wise old sage gave me a perl of wisdom: dirt keeps. it is not a priority that needs attention now. it will be there later.

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      1. Ain’t that the truth. And that is one reason why there is so much of it in my house.

        This time of year I would rather play with a different kind of dirt – I’m going to expand my herb garden so I get to go dig in the dirt. I wonder if that is as good for me as playing with play-doh?

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  16. Greetings! Happy Birthday, Dale and belated happy birthday to me! (Sun, Oct. 2). Stuff I know that nobody else seems to know is REAL NUTRITION. And the evils of the FDA, CDC, vaccines, Monsanto, Genetically Modified foods,etc. Important stuff. Not who’s the latest winner of American Idol.

    Anyway, home and unemployed again, so I’m going to do a home-based business. Also, here’s my new email address for everybody — please change in BBC or your personal address books for those of you that like to contact me. jmjensen57@gmail.com Have a great day and thanks for the fascinating info on nemotodes, Jim.

    P.S. – if you want to learn about the cutting edge, best anti-aging nutritionals available, just email me!

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    2. This seems to be the time of year for birthdays. A very happy birthday to you, Joanne, a few days late. Good luck with your new business and your efforts to provide ignored information about nutrition.

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    3. happy belated birthday to you joanne. welcome back under the wrong circumstances but we will enjoy you enen at the cost of paying the bills. hope it is short lived. email me anti aging please … quick…

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  17. Rode out to EagleLake. Saw a bird with downcast turn to his head, clearly a self-image problem. But the it was LESSER grebe.
    Rode through a 100 yards of that grass that has the white flairs that come off it, grows six, seven feet tall. Like a huge soft white version of wheat sheaves. Anyone know what that is called. It was wonderful to ride through. It is very near a road so I will try to take my wife and her walker out there today, depending on her health.
    For some reason made me think of Catherine, how she would render it in textiles. How would they look in Polaroid film? An abstract by tim. A photo by Steve.

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    1. i was enjoying that grass this morning too. someone near jacques house had palnted in on the boulavard between the sidewalk and the street. at first i thought how he must have screwed up and not known it would end up 5 feet tall then i noticed how totally beautiful it was and enjoyed the moment. abstract??? i like it. i will report back.

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    3. I know nothing about landscaping, but I think it’s pamprass grass — and yes it is lovely. Thanks for the kind words, everyone.

      Clyde, I hope your wife gets to go out with you and enjoy the scenery and the lovely weather.

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    4. Clyde, I think that plant is maiden grass or Miscanthus sinensis. I have often wondered what that grass is, so I looked it up and I think I found it.

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    1. Nematoids — now that’s a fun word that deserves a baboon definition. Was that a typo or is it an actual word?

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      1. Don’t be sorry — just more fodder for baboon foolishness. In my family, those who don’t attend family events are considered “worm sweat.” I think nematoid would work nicely in that situation as well.

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      2. Speaking of typos, old man brain drippage, and now sign droppage:
        The U-Haul by my house has been for months advertising “Climate-Controlled Elf Storage.” Anyone seen Legalos lately?
        And this sign on our apartment building office: Management has had emergency surgery and will be out of the office for two days.”

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      5. We did go out and she did get to walk through the grass on the bike trail. I will post a pix or two on my facebook.
        Then we went to the library. We have the worst library for any town this size. Mankato and North Mankato have dueling libraries instead of one cooperative one. DUH. Anyway, they had a sign up that read “When the security system alarms, please return to the check out desk.”
        Now I have no right to complain, especially today, but maybe I will collect bad signage in a book called “When Librarians Invent Verbs.”

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    3. The nematodes I named were in 2 genera, Eudorylaimus and Aporcelaimus. I could look up the species names, but I don’t think would be very interesting. In fact, the names the genera would have little meaning to all but a very few nematologists and maybe a few soil biologists.

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      1. I want to be in the bar at the convention center for the nemotologists of America yearly gathering in Vegas. Those wild ass parasitic montsters

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    4. Thanks Jim. I was wondering if you got to put your name in then genus or species.
      Also, Jim, I have a friend who is an exo-geobiologist who worked on the Mars life search project. He now teaches at USC.

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      1. It isn’t good form to name them after yourself. I did name a couple after other nematologist including Eudorylaimus thornei after Gerald Thorne. I am listed as the author of that name.

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  19. First, happy birthday(s) to all of them such as just got older. Good on you. Good to hear from you again Joanne!

    I try to find non-obvious answers to blog questions. What I know a lot about that is mostly ignored at the moment is the British tv series, “All Creatures Great and Small.” In recent days I have watched 23 hours of this beloved old series, and so I’m getting to know it pretty well. The way I watch something like this is to continually stop the Netflix viewing engine so I can go off on little quests for knowledge about the actors, the series, the animals, scandals about the actors, those cute cars they drove, and other trivia. Like tim said (I think) my knowledge of the series is a mile wide and an inch deep.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9o-Ewk5H5OM

    What amazes me, especially in view of the Ken Burns series on Prohibition that I’ve been watching, is how awash in alcohol this series is. Have you watched Casablanca or some other movie from the 1940s and been horrified by all the cigarettes? This sweet little series of vet stories has as much booze as Casablanca has smoke! It is good to be able to report that times have changed, and a modern remake of this series would have far less emphasis on booze.

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    1. Funny you should mention the smoke, Steve, as that is what really grabbed the s&h’s attention.

      Me, I want to do the book of knitting patterns for all those great Fair Isle sweaters and the sweater vests in that series (oerhaps with recipes for Mrs. Hall’s excellent cooking in the sidebars).

      Wonder if it would even be legal to do that.

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  20. Morning everyone!

    Thanks for the science this morning Jim! All I know is the soybean cyst nematode… and all I really know about that is the name.

    Happy Birthday Dale!
    Happy Birthday a day late and a year early Donna!

    Speaking of alarms, I have a new alarm app on my phone that woke me full blast this morning to the strains of Freddie Mercury’s ‘Barcelonia’… I’M UP! I’M UP!

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    2. Soybean cyst nematode is the main nematode that might get farmers attention in this part of the country. I think it causes wide spread small losses in many soybean fields and can cause fairly large losses in some fields. A former dairy farmer, like you, Ben, might not have any problems with this nematode because you probably haven’t grown soybeans very many times in most or all of your fields.

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  21. Happy birthday, Dale! Have a fun and relaxing day! It’s just beautiful out there today.

    Fun blog today, Jim! Here is a bit of overlooked information about nematodes. They’re great in healthy soil and gardens. They’re needed to break down the nutrients in soil so that plants can use them. Right now there are millions of them infesting the thousands of walnuts I have on the hill in my backyard. The husks are rotting off of the walnuts and hundreds of little white wiggly nematodes are crawling around in the decaying, blackening husks. YAY! Just what you wanted to know about nematodes and walnuts! Would you like to come over and identify the species, Jim? You could take their habitat with you if you’d like… 😉

    I’ve been getting familiar with the little guys over the past few days. The backyard hill is a disaster and there is only one woman who can reclaim it from the walnuts.

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    1. Nematodes do play a role in decomposition by being part of thefood chain. they actually eat organisms that do the decomposing and then are decomposed in turn themselves. Most soil nematodes are too small to see, but you might have some bigger ones in the walnut husks. I probably can’t tell what they are, but I wouldn’t mind getting a look at them and visiting some time.

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  22. I’m with Joanne (welcome back, even under iffy circumstances) about all the erroneous claims about what’s healthy to eat, etc. No time right now to find the articles, but there’s a lot of misinformation about the cholesterol hype, when it isn’t what causes heart disease…

    Happy Birthday, Dale! Was going to find the Beatles’ one for you, and see it’s already here!

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    2. It seems like you need to be a cell biologist or a chemist to know what to buy at the grocery store. I’m always trying to keep on top of all the advice – buy the Alaskan salmon, not the Atlantic salmon, and for god’s sake don’t buy the tilapia…coconut oil is bad for you – no, wait, it’s good for you, as long as it’s not hydrogenated…get the pop with the cane sugar, not the high fructose corn syrup, and on and on. No long ago I bought some of this cherry limeade, the Market Pantry kind they have at Target, and it says “naturally flavored” on the label on the front, and I open it up and it’s obviously made with an artificial sweetener, so I look on the back label and one of the ingredients is sucralose. What kind of natural flavor is that? Yecch.

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  23. …and now, thanks to Jim, I’m going out to the yard to find some nematodes, and maybe even some nematoids.

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    1. OMG — that is so, so …. sooo very …. je ne sais crois …. bad, campy, overdone while pretending to be underdone. I love William Shatner and he has his own ~style~ that makes it hard to take him seriously sometimes. Thanks for the memories, TGITH.

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      2. Oh, and in addition to ‘bad, campy, overdone, and underdone,’ don’t forget, “Really, really creepy…”

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    2. Thank you for that classic moment. I wonder if the complete Transformed Man has been video-ed. I’ll have to search and see if his Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds is available.

      My first thought on the Nematoids would be an over enthusiastic fan of Leonard Nimoy, but I sometimes just get a one trek mind.

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  25. Ack. I am going to log off and havent’t wished Dale a happy birthday yet! Happy Birthday Dale and all you other October aging Baboons (remember, aging beats the heck out of the alternative).

    Free advice-if your ice cream has those cute little gummy nematodes in it, go easy, you don’t want to lose a filling on your birthday.

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  27. This morning I sent my boss a memo about the origin of the term white elephant, communicated with the state epidemiologist about the incubation time for listeria, and discovered that one of my favorite books from childhood, The Shy Stegosaurus of Cricket Creek has been republished. I think I am a champion of ignored little pieces of information. Somebody pointed out to me that it is bad enough that I collect these ignored bits, but what makes it worse (and Cliffy-like) is that I work them into conversations. My favorite of the season-there was a short period of time when the mailing of children was permitted in this country. It was apparently cheaper to send a baby with postage on the mail train than it was to buy a train ticket. Apparently Mr Zip got tired of babysitting and the mailing of children was banned even though the mailing of day old poultry (including emus), scorpions (for medical research only), and small harmless cold-blooded animals is still permitted.

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  28. I don’t know what to say, Beth-Ann. When I came up with the question I didn’t kno we had a master of ignored information, like you, among us.

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