I think it’s funny every time I see or hear someone ascribe human-like behavior or features to microorganisms. For example, the above figure is similar to one that is routinely published in the literature as a representative of our pet bacterium Shewanella oneidensis.
I also recently saw this sign posted in a bathroom the other day. “Drown a Germ… Wash Your Hands!” it proclaims. But you’re not ‘drowning a germ’ when you use soap and water.
I am admittedly guilty of doing it from time to time: instead of studying how “metal-reducing bacteria reduce iron-oxide minerals,” I/we often study how “bacteria breathe iron.” Is that easier to understand or more confusing? I’m not sure, but I have a hard time imagining a bacteria with lungs especially ones that have iron floating around in them.
It bugs me when people anthropomorphize! It is done all the time with viruses. The virus ‘wants’ to remain latent, the virus ‘needs’ to evade the immune system. Obviously, that’s not the case, but it is the easiest way of communicating the big picture.
At least your bacteria are smiling. My herpes always looked rather glum.
Yes and also the tendancy to attribute human moral/value judgements onto ammoral systems is very misleading and ultimately bad science. Richard Dawkins’ “Selfish Gene” is one example I find very annoying. But note Darwin’s own description of Natural Selection in The Origin of Species Chapter 4:
“It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life”
According to Darwin’s personification Natural Selection is omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient.