Trivia Junction

A Compendium of trivia I find interesting
...for the curious

Is self sacrifice universal?

We like to think of sacrifice as a distinctly human trait, though it's well known that other species can be equally noble. (Think of a mother killdeer faking an injured wing to draw predators away from her brood.)

But sacrifice, it turns out, isn't even limited to multicell organisms. An amoeba called Dictostelium purpureum lives on the forest floor. When times are good, these one-celled organisms go it alone. But when they're starving, they gather, organizing themselves into a mushroom like structure.

The amoebae don't band together randomly. Studies show they seek out kin, then some individuals condemn themselves to die to form the stalk of the mushroom. Only the individuals at the top have the opportunity to disperse new spores and carry on the genetic line of all those below.

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