Vampyr Hounds: Dead Dog Cell Immortality Infects Other Dogs?

Cute Dead Dog.

And on with the story... Carl Zimmer looks at an interesting idea in biology... when can a parasitic mutation (like cancers) be considered a separate entity from its host. Or as he puts it "Can a tumor become a new form of life?".

Sticker's Sarcoma is an aleggedly transmissible tumour found in dogs. These tumours have been suggested to act more like a normal pathogen, they can be given to dogs from other dogs, by biting, licking, scratching and other transmission pathways. A similar mode of transmission has been suggested for Tasmanian Devil mouth tumours.

The weird thing is, these scientists did a genetic survey, comparing tumour cells with each other and their hosts - they found this:

"All of the tumor cells shared the same genetic marker," and that " the tumor cells [were] closely related to one another--and not closely related to the dogs in which they had been found."

Carl Zimmer calls this "Freaky". It's all sort of freaky, a little freaky-scary and a little freaky-cool.

R.I.P.per

And so the nation shed's a tear for Steve Irwin. The will the cry of "Crikey!" shall not be heard again while roaming the floodplains of the never-never. Well, at least until it's okay to start poking fun at a man who had poked quite a few things in his exitement filled life.

Irwin, being a prolific Australian, has reasonably raised the ire of many - especially Australians abroad who have to try and combat myths that the stubby wearing, mulleted enviro-warrior is not your typical Australian. He probably doesn't even rank as your average Queenslander. And he was bloody annoying at times. Still bloody annoying doesn't warrant a stingray to the chest.

What a way to go? Not only did he get a stingray barb to the chest (where the heart, lungs and other vital organs normally exist, for the biologically illiterate), video footage allegedly shows him pulling out the footlong piece of the offending beast (though not with his teeth), and starting to swim to the surface before (presumably) dying. Only 17 people have been confirmed dead from stingray incidents in the records, so Irwin's demise has been labelled a "freak accident" by practically all sources.

Queensland Premier Beattie has stepped up to the challenge and offered a state funeral too the Irwin's, should they choose it. Poor Bindie, not only does she bear that name, but her pops died while shooting footage for her first(?) documentary series of her own. That doesn't bode well for therapy. Hopefully the Australia Zoo and its associated franchises can continue its positive environmental message, the google legacy left by Irwin seems promising.

Colin Thiele, "one of Australia's most popular and successful children's authors" also died about the same time. Coincidence? Probably.

What you can do with a dead mouse

Warning: this is likely to gross out people. Those people probably shouldn't look too closely at other content on and linked to by this site. BTW screw you.

"We just found a dead mouse and cut it all up and played with its corpse. Is that so wrong?"

Of course not.

What sort of society frowns upon this sort of non-invasive totally moral curosity-driven investigation into the nature of things?

Then again, it is a bit gross.