For sure, they'll soon have plenty of food in the form of the six billion (yes, 6x10^9!) plastic face masks discardedeveryday by humankind and, eventually, ending up floating somewhere in the ocean.
And here is how the plastic plate appears to our little friends, the microbes. Bon Appetit!
A splendid song, splendidly sung by Jonna Jinton, Swedish singer. The images are haunting and beautiful, suggesting the beauty of the forest inhabited by wolves, humans, and other creatures that form a single system, holobionts within the greater holobiont that covers the land. A few minutes of bliss, welcome in the difficult times we are living.
These are the words in Swedish ("vargen" means wolves) -- Here you can find a more traditional version. Note how gentle and compassionate is the song, with the mother
understanding the hunger and the distress of the wolf and willing to
give it a pig tail or a chicken shank.
Vargen ylar i natten skog Han vill men kan inte sova Hungern river i hans varga buk O det är kallt i hans stova
Du varg du varg, kom inte hit Ungen min får du aldrig
Vargen ylar i natten skog Ylar av hunger o klagar Men jag ska gen en grisa svans Sånt passar i varga magar
Du varg du varg, kom inte hit Ungen min får du aldrig
Sov mitt barn i bädden hos mor Låt vargen yla i natten Men jag ska gen en hönsa skank Om ingen annan har tatt den
Du varg du varg kom inte hit Ungen får du aldrig Ooo Ungen den får du aldrig
And here is a version in English (translated using Google, revised using common sense, as I don't speak Swedish. May not be perfect).
Marc Chagall (1887-1985)is reported to have said, "Only love interests me, and I am only in contact with things that revolve around love." His paintings have a certain "holobiontic" quality. This one, "Les Amoureux de Vence" was painted in 1957,
What do holobionts, empathy, and harmony have in common with sex? One thing: they are all forms of horizontal transmission of information. We tend to see ourselves as multicellular organisms and, for us, sex is indeed a "horizontal" thing, in a certain sense.
But, sex was not invented by multicellular creatures. On this planet, sex is mostly something that bacteria engage in, freely exchanging genetic materials among themselves. It is free love that goes on all the time among single-celled creatures. And it is the way they evolve. It is by exchanging genetic materials that bacteria have become more and more capable to resist to the human attacks against them by means of antibiotics.
And even viruses, which can't reproduce by themselves, have sex with each other. It is just that they can only do that when two different viruses find themselves in the same host cell. That can become even a little weird when the two viruses come from different previous hosts, say a pangolin and a human being. In any case, viruses evolve very fast, that's why almost every year a new wave of influenza spreads over the world.
For larger holobionts, such as human beings, the situation is different when you consider the reproductive mechanism of the main organism, the human one. Two human organisms exchange genetic information, but then this information must be "read" in a complex process that involves the birth of a new human being (and, unfortunately, the death of the old one). It is slow: in terms of evolutionary prowess, viruses and bacteria run circles around us. Fortunately, our immune system can also change fast enough to match the new threats, and we are also defended by the "good" biome that form the human holobiont, the bacterial and viral symbionts we carry with us. And we are part of the larger holobiont we call the ecosystem.
Holobionts are fractal systems: the true embodiment of the poem of Jonathan Swift
The Vermin only teaze and pinch
Their Foes superior by an Inch.
So, Nat'ralists observe, a Flea
Hath smaller Fleas that on him prey,
And these have smaller yet to bite 'em,
And so proceed ad infinitum:
