Humans are not even CLOSE to the top of the food chain!

In science fiction and fantasy movies, we have long considered the possibility of terrifyingly advanced alien species that prey on humans, or perhaps even creatures that already hide among us, look like us, and are specially adapted to prey exclusively on us (see, e.g., the vampires in the Twilight series). But fantasy is reality.

In order to find a sneaky creature that is specially adapted to prey on humans without their knowledge, we more and more frequently need look no farther away than our own beds.

I am referring, of course, to the common bed bug. Back in the 1940s, with the introduction of DDT, bed bugs were virtually eradicated from the developed world. Yet, over the past decade or so, they have started to come back with a vengeance, having evolved resistance to some of our weapons.

Bed Bugs

The term “bed bug” refers to bugs in the genus Cimex.

All Cimex feed on the blood of mammals and birds, but the common bed bug, Cimex lectularius, specializes exclusively on human blood. 

C. lectularius hides itself away in a crack or crevice of your bed, where you are unlikely to discover it. If there is a rip or a tear, it will crawl inside and slowly establish a colony. During the day, it hides away and sleeps. Then, after you lay down for sleep, it senses your body heat and the carbon dioxide from your breathing, and it wakes from its slumber. It creeps up and finds an area of exposed skin, where it starts to saw away with specially adapted mouth instruments, until it reaches a blood source. It injects saliva containing anti-coagulants (to stop your blood from clotting!) and anesthetics (painkillers, so that you don’t wake up and protect yourself!). Then, it utilizes the body’s natural blood pressure to engorge itself with a meal over the course of 5-10 minutes. Once it has had its fill, it retreats back to its hiding place, having only been in contact with its sleeping host for perhaps 20 minutes!

Bed bugs have evolved numerous traits specifically for the purpose of facilitating their predation of humans.

Besides the previously mentioned anti-coagulants and anesthetics in their saliva, and specialized mouth parts, C. lectularius senses minute changes in heat, and connects that heat with a warm body by detecting CO2 in the air. C. lectularius walks very slowly, so it travels by hiding in our accessories. But, they don’t stay in our clothing, because it is too hot. C. lectularius has evolved to stay a safe distance away from human body heat except when it is feeding because that way it is less likely to get smashed accidentally, and it is less likely to be discovered. C. lectularius doesn’t just hide in beds, it hides in sofas, chairs, and anywhere else that it can hide where it might have access to a human blood meal. C. lectularius grows by molting (6 times before it becomes a reproductive adult), and it only molts after it has a meal. It doesn’t waste energy wandering around when it doesn’t detect humans. It can survive for months without food (longer in colder climates), if, for example, you go on vacation, or visit a friend. If it is hungry, it will come out for food any time it senses your presence, even if it is not night-time.

C. lectularius is not known to transmit any diseases to humans, even though it is known to carry 28 human pathogens. Perhaps that is itself an evolved trait. After all, a dead human is hardly valuable as a food source. 

C. lectularius is adapted to prey on nothing but humans, and for all of our technological advancement, it has managed to continually evolve alongside us as a predator. It lives where we live. It sleeps where we sleep. It senses our presence, and incapacitates us as it carefully feeds on us as we sleep.

C. lectularius is the quintessential human predator. 

But, bed bugs are not the only human predator.

We are also preyed on by ticks, mosquitoes, gnats, other insects, rodents, tigers, leopards, bears, Komodo dragons, hyenas, cougars, crocodilians, dingos, coyotes, pigs, boa constrictors, piranhas, catfish and sharks. Tiny baby tapeworms crawl into our blood stream when we walk outside with an exposed cut on our feet, then they establish themselves in our intestines, where they proceed to grow to vast sizes. Numerous viruses and bacteria survive by consuming us.

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is another perfect example of a human predator that has successfully evolved to evade our defenses. 

Millions of creatures depend on us for their sustenance, each in its own way. In 2012, scientists unveiled the first ever catalog of the bacteria, viruses, and other microorganisms that populate every nook and cranny of the human body. For every human gene in your body, there are 360 microbial genes.

9 out of every 10 cells in the human body are NOT EVEN HUMAN. 

When you map out the food chain, giving photosynthesizers a score of 1, and creatures eating photosynthesizers a score of 2, etc., it turns out that humans are only ranked 2.21. Top predators, meanwhile, rank over 5. In other words, they are the predators that eat predators that eat the predators of the herbivores that eat the plants.

Far from being at the top of the food chain, humans are barely more than herbivores. 

So, what IS at the top of the food chain? Bed bugs?

No. Bed bugs are just bugs. They can be eaten by anything that likes to eat bugs. A frog or a spider, for example, probably wouldn’t turn one down. All domestic cockroaches are known to eat bed bugs (turns out they ARE good for something!). Ants, mites, and centipedes are also bed bug predators.

There is actually an insect called the “masked bed bug hunter.”

All of those creatures are themselves generally considered fairly low on the totem pole, and are eaten by zillions of other creatures, which are eaten by other creatures, in a complicated mesh of loops and swirls. We aren’t at the top of the food chain. We aren’t even close. We are just one little piece of the food chain. 

OK, so other creatures live on us, attack us, and eat us occasionally. But, we are smart and we can kill them if we want to, and we can eat almost anything if we want to, so is it really fair to classify other animals as higher than us on the food chain?

By the most fundamental measure of evolutionary success, that is continued existence, replication and proliferation (expected to continue into the future), there are probably billions, if not trillions of other creatures on this earth that are just as, or more “successful” than us.

In a nuclear apocalypse, or a major asteroid collision, there is a long list of creatures far more likely to survive extinction than us. 

Other creatures communicate in subtle but effective ways. They send out chemicals, or make sounds. They can sense infrared radiation, or extraordinarily minute changes in the instance of specific chemicals or trace gases. They use pheromones. They have complex societal structures. They bond, and they mate, and they evolve and change and grow and survive. They eat and are eaten. They feel pain. They work together. They value their own lives, and those of their families above the lives of creatures like us that are not in their species (unless, of course, they happen to be dependent on us as a food source). Some creatures dedicate their entire lives to keeping us alive because we unwittingly provide food and shelter to them.

The real world is a far more complex place than we imagine. Physically, almost every cell in our bodies has been replaced within ten years of our lives. Memories are nothing more than electrical signals and chemical impressions on the neural cells in our brain.

Conclusion

Far from being distinct beings independent/separable from our environments which threatens the very existence of life on this planet with our reckless disregard for our own power, we are actually a nest of trillions of organisms enacting complicated and porous relationships beyond the purview of our ordinary senses with our environment, and with an incomprehensible number of its inhabitants. We are actually, probably, powerless to destroy life on this planet (although we could certainly set its complexity back a few hundred million years). We are actually constantly evolving alongside those creatures with whom we enjoy symbiotic relationships.

Maybe the resurging bed bugs can puncture the bubble of hot air that has been filling our heads, and remind us that we truly are inextricably a part of this world, co-equal and codependent on trillions of other organisms. 

Do you think humans should take a closer look in the mirror? Sound off in the comments below.

 

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Sailing on Starlight – For Real?

The recent discovery of Pluto’s surface after a 9 1/2 year trip has got me thinking about space-travel. I poked around on the internet, and I came across something fascinating. It turns out that NASA is designing a spacecraft that can literally sail on the kinetic energy of photons, and thereby travel across the universe without an on-board power source. This technology would be as groundbreaking for space exploration as the actual sail was for exploring the seas several hundred years ago.

So how does it work?

The sails are essentially giant mirrors that are heat- and cold-resistant, durable, and 100 times thinner than a piece of paper.

Light (electromagnetic radiation) is made up of photons, which are very complicated, but for now we can think of them as particles flying through space. The photons hit the aluminized, mirrored surface and bounce off. When they do so, they transfer some of their kinetic energy to the thing they hit, and use the rest to move themselves in the opposite direction. That causes the mirror to move away from the light source a little bit.

At the distance the Earth is from the Sun, the Sun’s light would exert 9 newtons of force per square mile on the mirror. Recall that a Newton is supposed to be the weight of a medium-sized apple, because Newton was struck on the head by an apple before he thought of gravity. 9 newtons is 0.78 lbs.

A spaceship exerts millions of newtons to try to get off of the ground in the first place, so 9 newtons is really not much. However, there is no friction from air slowing a spacecraft down when it is flying through space. So, what really would happen is that the newtons would slowly add up over time, and the spacecraft could eventually be flying through space at a very rapid pace.

Conclusion

Obviously, the sunlight that would hit a spacecraft floating around Pluto would produce a lot less force than 9 newtons. But, all you have to do is plan your trip so that you build up a lot of speed while you are closer to the sun, and then just don’t make any unnecessary stops out in the middle of nowhere. If a spacecraft built up enough speed, it might be able to make it to another solar system within a reasonable time frame. Perhaps with the help of a red giant, or one of those supermassive, superhot blue stars, we could build up enough speed to challenge our assumptions about the speed of light, and really get our exploration on.