A Schooner of Science

Adopt a microbe from the deep sea

// August 10th, 2010 // Just for Fun, Science Communication

Would you like to adopt a microbe from the deep sea? Sounded like fun to me, so I have adopted Mariprofundus ferrooxydans, a fancy pants microbe that produces ribbons of rust. That’s him in the picture, ain’t he cute. He’ll grow up to be a fearsome microbe one day, methinks I’ll call him redbeard.

If you’d like to adopt one for yourself, click through. It’s free, and you can do fun activities like model your microbe out of balloons, write a haiku about the microbe, or take swabs of your teeth and see what kind of bacteria grow.

Here’s my haiku about Mariprofundus ferroxydans

Redbeard be your name
Rust ribbons dost thou excrete
Let’s burn and pillage!