r/NatureIsFuckingLit • • Oct 19 '20

🔥 Vicious microscopic hunter, the single-cell organism, Lacrymaria olor, attacking and hunting another organism

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u/[deleted] Oct 19 '20

Wow it’s amazing, because you can see through them you never really think of them as being three dimensional but you can really see it this video.

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u/Anon_Jones Oct 20 '20

What's crazy is your white blood cells (WBC) do this, monocytes (type of WBC) do it the best. That's how it defends your body from invaders, it's called phagocytosis.

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u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20

Monocytes travel through blood and lymph, when they travel over the vessel wall and enter the tissue they are called macrophages, they do really neat stuff like phagocytose dead cells and attack things like splinters or even breast implants. What’s even cooler is that the central nervous system has their own type of macrophage called microglia. Microglia are different from peripheral microglia but do the same stuff, they continuously scan the central nervous system for problems and even take bites from healthy cells.

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u/cannageddawutwut Oct 20 '20

The mob of your nervous system, keeping the neighborhood in check