Word: paramecia
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...paramecium is a giant, just visible to a good, sharp, naked eye. For three years Dr. Herbert Spencer Jennings, distinguished University of California at Los Angeles zoologist,* has been watching a thousand generations of one species, Paramecium bur-saria, under his microscope. Last week he told about his paramecia's mating habits...
...Paramecia reproduce mostly by fission -splitting in two-like the smaller and simpler amoebae, but now & then paramecia mate by clinging together in pairs. This seems to put new vigor into the reproductive cycle. Some paramecium pairs come together violently, adhere for 24 to 36 hours. Other matings are gentler, even flirtatious. Dr. Jennings said he had seen pairs nuzzle each other several times, then swim off side by side in graceful spirals, like "couples in a dance." After years of watching these goings-on, Dr. Jennings was willing to carry the origins of social behavior all the way back...