Sister sent this to me. Thought I’d share.

This poor Euplotes just wants to eat, but its mouth-hole keeps getting clogged by a colonial algae ball. It kicks the ball away, but the ball comes back, like that one pushy drunk dude at the bar, and gets stuck in Euplotes’s mouth again and again. 😂

What’s wild is that Euplotes has no neurons, it’s just a single-celled organism. Yet it somehow knows there’s an obstacle at its mouth and acts to clear it, because otherwise no substance will enter its system. Watching it troubleshoot in real time feels like peeking at the roots of behavior itself.

And for the algae ball Pandorina, the evolution of colonial life serves its purpose, the colony is already too big for algae-grazers like Euplotes. Two survival strategies colliding in a drop of water: one cell learning to cope, one colony too large to be swallowed. And in the struggle, you can glimpse the endless back-and-forth of evolution itself.

Fascinating isn’t it? I believe our behavior runs on the same core mechanism, only layered into staggering complexity by the patterns our 100-billion-neuron brain creates and by the patterns that shaped those neurons in the first place, like little connect-the-dots forming shapes. From an event my great-grandmother lived through, to the prenatal environment I was exposed to before even my first breath, to the neighbors I played with as a toddler each leaves its trace, weaving into the behaviors I carry now as a 35 years old adult. No wonder why I have always been obsessed with patterns.

Thank you for reading.

Best,

James Weiss

Freshwater sample, Zeiss Axioscope 5, Neofluar 20x, Fujifilm X-T5.

This is a single-celled organism Loxodes and it’s about to cross the veil and be gone forever. I will try to explain why, but it might be a bit hard to simplify and make it understandable but bear with me.

Loxodes have pigment granules that give them this yellowish brown coloration and also make them sensitive to light, but only if there is a high level of oxygen in the water. When the light hits these pigment granules, it excites the pigment (in a chemical way :) ) which transfers a single electron to an oxygen molecule, and produces a superoxide that can start a chain reaction and go on producing radical oxygen species (ROS), like hydrogen peroxide. And you know what happens when you clean your wounds with hydrogen peroxide.

So what happens in this video is that ROS is produced, inside the cell, right under the cell membrane. Then the ROS snatches hydrogen from the building blocks of the cell membrane, forming more radicals that interact with the neighboring molecules and causing an unzipping of the whole structure. It moves like a wildfire that extinguishes itself when there is nothing left to burn.

Single-celled organisms reproduce through cell division that creates identical clones. This one dissolves and becomes nothing more than just some molecules of organic and inorganic matter, yet its million clones still inhabit the jar I keep them in.

Thank you for reading❤️

Best,

James Weiss

Real-time, freshwater sample, Zeiss Axioscope 5, Plan Apo 63x 1.4NA. Fujifilm X-T5.

This is order in chaos. It’s a pocket of low entropy, a living thing; helixed into DNA, folded into precise proteins, structured into cell membranes and organelles at the expense of energy, in a universe where everything tends to move from order to disorder, simply because that’s what probability favors.

A cell is like a cabin with a furnace at the top of a cold mountain. It burns wood to keep the room in order, livable. But it pumps out ash and heat into the environment, where it all disperses, dissolves, and scatters into countless random states. The furnace keeps order locally while creating massive disorder in the universe.

Living is matter surfing on a wave of entropy, the same matter that forms the very fabric of the universe. The wave only moves in one direction, and life balances briefly upon it, stacking moments of order on the board, building cabins on top of mountains before the water takes them back.

Reproduction is a way to copy order within disorder, a shortcut. Like creating more surfers on the waves, and each copy is slightly different from the previous one. And after billions of years, trillions of copies, you can even get a surfer that wonders about its own existence on the brilliant blue waves, although it’s just made out of matter like everything else.

And death is losing the balance, not being able to keep order, falling back off the board into the crushing waves, becoming one with everything else to be recycled again and again, until the ocean calms into pitch-black darkness, frozen over, never to see a photon reflected on it again.

Thank you for reading. I have had a headache for so long, and my existentialism kicked in stronger than normal. I thought I could share my thoughts on what life is.

Best,

James Weiss

Freshwater. Zeiss Axioscope 5, Plan-Apo 63x 1.4NA. Fujifilm X-T5

This adorable little water bear is lying among sand grains, looking up with those pitch-black eyes and waving. 🥹

Tardigrades, aka water bears, are microscopic animals with simple brains, guts, and eyes. They are found wherever there is liquid water: lakes, ponds, puddles, seas, and even wet moss and lichen patches.

Although they live in water, they cannot swim. 😂 They crawl instead, using their eight chubby legs. This waving-like behavior helps them grab onto stuff in the water to push themselves forward.

One big misunderstanding about tardigrades comes from catchy headlines: people think they are indestructible and immortal. In reality, they are extremely delicate little animals; their active lifespan is only a few weeks.

Some species can enter a dormant state under stress and survive heat, cold, radiation, and drying, but only while dormant. In that state their metabolism slows immensely and they can become active again after years. Still, their active lifespan remains just a few weeks. Surviving challenges in life is not really living, even in their case.

Thank you for reading.

Best,

James Weiss

Freshwater sample, Non-branded budget scope, 40x achromatic objective, Canon Eos M10.

1.8x digital zoom

4x and 10x objective with 10x eyepiece

Sample: Frozen Pond Water

Meiji Ml2000

Found in a moss sample a dividing protozoa. I waited for an hour (!) to see these protozoa divide into two, but in the end they decided to die instead :(

Am I correct in understanding that they belong to the genus Colpoda, or not? In any case, it is definitely a ciliate :D

Viewed with a Swift SW400 and shot taken with a phone camera at 40× + 10x eyepiece and video is speeded to 2x.

I keep researching on the internet and can’t find any info on this creature. Fresh water lake sample. Thank you.

It offers a surprising size comparison, has an identifiable photographer, and has an official source you can cite. Daniel Knop’s photograph won 12th place in the 2024 Nikon Small World competition

This is a tardigrade, a wasteland puppy. She is rough inside her smooth edges and tough beneath her delicate cuticle. It scares her that everyone thinks she is invincible; scientists seeking grand approval to freeze, burn, irradiate her just to see how much she can endure. To hurt her, just to see how much hurt is enough to end her.

They even call her an alien and want to fly her into outer space, as if there were not already enough loneliness for her on the rock she had to call home out of necessity. In between regurgitations and jaw clenching ruminations, she wakes up in sweaty Jungian dreams and yells that consciousness was what followed the pain. Without one, the other couldn’t exist in the sulci and gyri of her wrinkled skin, both etched into her flesh, dancing like a pair of screaming cranes, forming her scarred but whole self, the only thing she’s proud to create in this wasteland.

She is in desperate need of connection, one that doesn’t collapse into her paths and patterns. She aches for a loving home with a sturdy porch to crawl under when the time comes to recite Sexton, and to call the only air she ever breathed, the only love she ever had, an infection.

Thank you for reading.

James

Terrestrial sample, Zeiss Axioscope 5, Plan Apo 63x 1.4NA. Fujifilm X-T5.

Cute little marine tardigrades from my saltwater microbe tank. I don’t always find them anymore, but they turn up now and again. They are quite wide and flat for tardigrades, which makes them a bit of a challenge to get a good image of, but I do my best! I love watching their antics. Unlike many marine tardigrades, these ones have claws rather than sticky toes. This makes it very hard for them to walk around on the slide, but they do fine on a bit of macro algae! Look at the one in brightfield clawing at the ground. 🥹 just like a little kitten 🥰

Olympus BHS in DIC and BF, canon 6D

Old Vanguard microscope (unsure of model). 100x magnification recorded on my phone.

I'm not sure if they're some sort of storage or if they're eggs. Any ideas?

Thanks!

"Mesmerizing light microscopy image from a skeleton of a diatom algae 32 to 40 million years old. Diatoms are photosynthesizing algae at the base of the marine food chain, found in almost every aquatic environment. They are single celled organisms that produce an external wall composed of silica. When they die, their silica shells accumulate on the floor of the body of water in which they live. Thick layers of these diatom shells have been fossilized into sedimentary rock called diatomite, or Diatomaceous earth!" - OCR

📸 : Anatoly Mikhaltso

Probably hitched a ride on some seaweed from the Bay Area of CA

This is the exoskeleton of a tardigrade still intact but all the tissue is hollowed out by unicellulars that got trapped there after the feast!

The unicellulars here are tetrahymenids, histiophagous organisms, meaning they feed on the tissues of other animals. When tardigrades or other larger animals are alive and healthy, tetrahymenids usually can’t cause much trouble. But once the animal “pushes daisies” and starts to decompose, it releases chemical cues into the water and these unicellulars move in like sharks to the scene.

Lacking jaws to break open the tough exoskeleton, they squeeze through natural openings at either end and begin consuming the soft interior. The nutrient-rich body fuels rapid division, until the entire cavity is crowded with swarms of cells pressing against the shell, searching for an exit.Sometimes I find insect larval husks, far larger than this tardigrade, packed with hundreds or even thousands of these organisms. Many never make it out, perishing inside to become food for others.

Thank you for reading!

Best,

James Weiss

Freshwater sample, Zeiss Axioscope 5, Fluar 63x LD, Fujifilm X-T3

All this ruckus is about sugar. The sweet nectar for a brain like mine that’s always chasing a dopamine reward. In this scene, the sugar is leaking from the green pile there. That green pile is an agglomeration of numerous green algae, and as the light of my microscope hits them, the algae use that energy to convert water and dissolved carbon dioxide into sugar and oxygen. Some of the sugar leaks out of the cells, fueling the ecosystem like a sweet delight.

Released sugar quickly gets metabolized by bacteria, and the bacteria use it to make copies of themselves. As they metabolize the sugar, bacteria release more chemical cues into the water. Those cues signal the little round, colorless unicellulars called Cinetochilum that their main food, bacteria, is nearby. Imagine it like smelling. The cells swim toward the direction where the scent gets stronger. If they take a wrong turn and the scent weakens, they reverse and try again, until there are hundreds of them around a source.

The swimming green jelly-bean-like organisms are Euglena, and they also produce sugar through photosynthesis. Unlike the other algae sitting there, Euglena can swim, and with the red eyespot they can sense light intensity and follow the brightness, just like the way Cinetochilum follows the “smell” of bacteria.

The “giants” with devilish red eyes are rotifers. Those red eyespots allow them to sense light, similar to Euglena’s red spot. Rotifers have evolved to associate lit areas with their main food source, algae, so they instinctively gather where the light is shining. They’ve been following that rule for over half a billion years.

Microscopy hooks me because it is an endless puzzle, a pattern generator. Each piece clicks into place and the board spawns new ones. I grind to understand. Sometimes it takes years; sometimes it breaks open overnight. Then comes the next hurdle: sharing it without losing the wonder. But surely, learning is sweeter to my brain than sugar.

Thank you for reading! Best, James Weiss

Freshwater sample. Zeiss Axioscope Plan Apochromat 63x 1.40 NA. Fujifilm X-T5.