Monday, July 25, 2005

Worms Are Stressed Too?

So says a new study. This is important because there are many shared similarities between all God's creatures, and oftentimes what's discovered in one species applies as well to others.

"We have shown it's possible to predict the life span in an organism on the first day of adult life based on how it responds to stress," said Thomas Johnson, a professor who helped lead the study.

"This is something that has not been done before, and has implications for human longevity and health."

Researchers tested more than 100 nematodes known as Caenorhabditis elegans – a worm favoured by scientists because it is easy to work with.

The results, although important, were not all that shocking. For example, worms that stripped for a living led stressful lives and died sooner than worms that worked for the *government. Worms that worked at Wal Mart fared poorly as well.

There were other factors besides work that influenced a worm's life expectancy. Geographical location was an important factor. Worms on either coast tended to have higher levels of stress than worms in the middle of the country. Worms in the middle of the country lived, on average, sixteen days, although they were quite bored and didn't quite know what to do with themselves.

French worms stumped researchers because although they drank heavily and enjoyed a diet heavy in cream and butter, they lived a long time.

Scientists will continue collecting more data on the worms.


*All government agencies except for the postal service. Those worms had much shorter life spans.

2 comments:

Butternut said...

French worms have lower stress because they are less concerned about their environment. C'est la vie.

Postal worms (Caenorhabditis psychotis) tend to keep to themselves and prefer to work and live alone. Rarely, they are found to suddenly turn on other worms and eat them. However they are more likely to just break Netflix rentals and forget to pick up the tax returns on their routes. Bastards.

Although nematodes are easy to work with, stressed out software industry worms are not.

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