Of course they poop!

In case you’re thinking that the research and issues reported in the venerable Science magazine are too hifalutin for the average reader, I direct your attention to a story that was published in the 23 March 2016 issue.

If the title, “Why watching comb jellies poop has stunned evolutionary biologists” doesn’t get you, what about the opening sentence: “No buts about it, the butthole is one of the finest innovations in the past 540 million years of animal evolution”?

Well, if that doesn’t draw you in to the article, I just don’t know what will.

I love that there’s apparently a comb jelly(fish)—formal name ctenophore—and that they call it Ctenopolooza. I’m betting these evolutionary biologists really know how to party.

And I love it that videos of the ctenophores engaging in acts of ingestion and egestion were received like a Tarantino film at Cannes.

Well, the excitement doesn’t end there. If you scroll down, the first couple of dozen comments are all asking the big question: how can you write about a revolutionary video of comb jellies pooping without including the, you know, video?

(Yeah, the comments end up going to hell when some troll gets into the act and someone else feeds it. They go on for a couple of dissertations, but once you see Frankensteinsmonster, you can stop reading.)

In case you're curious about the video, too, I've looked. William Browne, of the University of Miami is clearly keeping it close to his vest, and it's nowhere to be seen. He may be working on a distribution deal.

But wait, there’s more. Because in the 3 June issue of Science, a letter was published from Sidney L. Tamm, PhD, of the Boston University Marine Biological Laboratory, under the title, “No surprise that comb jellies poop”. Tamm, one of the Ctenopolooza organizers, assures us, “It is now recognized that ctenophores expel waste from both ends.”

Well, there you go.

Listen—in a presidential election year, I’m going to take my enlightenment wherever I can find it.