Word: protozoa
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Mighty Gut. A termite digests cellulose with the help of the swarms of protozoa (one-celled animals) which teem in its guts. Since termites reduce cellulose (the toughest part of plants) to humus and provide food for new plants, their destruction of wood is really a vital part of the vegetative cycle of growth and decay...
...tsetse looks something like an ordinary housefly, but has the sharp proboscis and the bloodthirsty habits of a mosquito. When an infected tsetse bites a man, it injects into his bloodstream protozoa known as trypanosomes, which-for the tsetse is omnivampiverous-it may have picked up from the blood of alligators, hippopotamuses, hartebeests, etc. This parasite invades the human lymph stream, the spleen, finally the brain. At first, tsetse victims become feverish, develop swollen lymph glands. Gradually they fall into a deep slumber, grow delirious as the trypanosomes attack the nervous system and brain. Many of these sleeping sick...
Zoologists Johnson and Jahn studied these microscopic protozoa in Iowa ponds for five summers, found they were reddest when the temperature was a sunny 90° or more. Taken to a dark laboratory, the animals turned green, then turned red again not only on exposure to light but to heat. Reason: migration of a red pigment between the animal's interior and its surfaces. Its purpose: to protect the chlorophyll granules from an overload of light, which would destroy the pigment. Besides making food like plants, Euglenae also can eat like animals...
...Said Dr. Snapper: "The parasitic disease which places its mark all over internal medicine in North China is kala-azar....It has to be considered in nearly every patient." This hideous malady, caused by tiny protozoa (Leishmania), produces an enormous spleen, anemia, and ulcers around the mouth, robs the body of its white blood cells, kills 95% of its victims who are not treated. Antimony is a specific for the disease, but of course few of its victims ever see a doctor until the disease is far advanced. Kala-azar is primarily an affliction of dogs, is passed to human...
...seas where ichthyosaurs swam. In the pertrified muck geologists find the dinosaurs' infinitesimal contemporaries because they are bored up intact and in great numbers. In the Carboniferous period and before, when the earth's coal and oil deposits were formed, there prospered a hard-shelled order of protozoa, the Foraminifera, which were sometimes two inches but usually less than a millimeter across. Micropaleontologists watch for these and do not overlook the fragmentary remains of such creatures as worms, starfish, sea urchins, etc. When oilmen strike a wildcat gusher, they sometimes spend from...