Word: paramecium
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...among the Animalcules. Less than 1/125th of an inch long and shaped like the sole of a lady's slipper, Paramecium bursaria or the slipper animalcule is a comparatively large member of the class Infusoria-a family of hairy, one-celled animals that swarm in lily ponds, goldfish bowls, and even in water glasses on the best dining tables. Paramecium, because of its size and fecundity (two generations a day), is a favorite subject for the study of unicellular life. Dr. Jennings, whose private laboratory is cluttered with his favorite "critters," believes they also provide important keys...
...Couples in a Dance." Well known to every first-year biology student, the paramecium is a one-celled, slipper-shaped little animal which lives in ponds and puddles. In the one-celled kingdom the 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...
...soberly at the heart where most other cinemakers would aim at the funny bone. Whether the box offices will consider Producer Wanger as nifty a batter as Willie Keeler is another matter. Few Hollywood producers dare strike whimsical notes on the polymorphism of the ant, the physical advantage the paramecium holds over the amoeba. But in the capable hands of Henry Fonda & Joan Bennett, top Wanger stars, and an able cast, / Met My Love A gain's invertebrate allegories, its academic ups & downs, its ten changing years and its sopping-wet windup are invariably diverting, variably brilliant...
Life's Tenacity. Professor Lorande L. Woodruff of Yale has a microorganism, paramecium, in captivity. It has reproduced itself 8,500 generations (the equivalent of 250,000 years for humans), and has yet died no natural death. Dr. Thomas H. Morgan of Columbia found that 1/250th part of a worm will regenerate and become younger than the original worm. Dr. Alexis Carrel of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research has kept a chicken's heart alive and growing for 15 years, longer than any ordinary chicken ever lived. Dr. Carrel sailed for a vacation on the Continent last...