Animacules and Other Little Subjects

When Mark Smith takes his pickle jar down to the pond and fills it will smaller forms of water life to study for the afternoon, there is a calm and less important feel to what he is about to do. Our lives are so bogged down with the worries and conundrums of the larger world that in all of our efforts to save the human species we forget that there is a much more complex ecosystem that includes all species, even ones smaller than a millimeter, trying to survive on this planet as well. "For some reason I often feel calm and reassured afterward, perhaps because I realize how much room remains for more." Smith's feeling of calm is like my own when reading this article, because after all of the worrisome feelings I have for our planet, species, and future it is nice to see the complexity of the smaller creatures and how their lives are being lived.

"As a lifelong devotee of life, I have had my fair share of pets." Smith goes on to tell us about his history of loving animals and studying them under microscopes. His odd pet of paramecium is a sort of declaration of his love of all species for he claims at the time he could only view them as white specs when he looked closely. Paramecium eat bacteria so they keep their habitat very clean. That is genius to me. Self cleaning machines, what a dual relationship they have with the environment. All in all Smith ponders over whether his innate love of microscopic species is "wisdom or lunacy" and it seems that although they are small they must be studied for the mere perfection of how they seamlessly work their way into the ecosystems perfect mess of how living things work together to create life as we know it.