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In the years following the July 2007 disaster at Mystery Flesh Pit National Park, practical study of the Permian Basin Superorganism has slowed to a crawl, particularly for those disciplines without obvious commercial applications. Venteriozoology in particular has suffered heavily, as little of the animal life in the Superorganism has commercial value, and field expeditions of purely academic value are largely infeasible and almost never permitted. In this hostile environment, scientists are often forced to rely on literature review, analysis of available collections and media ephemera, and other thin empirical data to support increasingly theoretical work. This paper takes one such piece of ephemeral media, a YouTube "viral video" of an incident involving a Superorganism endoparasite engaging in never-before-seen behavior, and forwards a hypothesis on a novel interaction between two parasitic organisms and a solution to a long-standing biological puzzle.
The "viral video" in question was uploaded to YouTube in October 2006, under the title of "Facehugger FREAKOUT!" The video, shot on a cell phone in the picnic area located in the Pleural Divide of the Southern Brachial Forest, features approximately three minutes of footage of a Mesogleal Tridecapod (Ferrarthros tridecapoda) in obvious and uncharacteristic distress, scuttling and thrashing along the brachial surface and opening gashes in the flesh with both its mouth and its locomotive legs. While the Tridecapod's mouth is oozing a clear substance believed to be an anticoagulant used in feeding, no proboscis is visible and no feeding behavior is attempted. After approximately two minutes of this behavior (punctuated by audible cries of confusion and amazement from human onlookers, although no human interferes with the Tridecapod or enters the frame of the video), the Tridecapod's mouth opens beyond its normal feeding width, and the creature begins to vomit both a pale red hemolymph-like fluid (presumed to be mundane digestive ejecta) and small, gelatinous globules of flesh, which creep into the fresh wounds created in the Superorganism. (While a great deal of their propulsive force is granted by the initial vomit, extended video analysis suggests that these flesh globules engage in a small amount of self-directed motion.) Following expulsion of several dozen globules, the Tridecapod adopts an undistressed posture and rapidly leaves the site of the incident, in the direction of electrified park facilities as would be expected. While the human crowd expresses fresh shock and disgust in the background, the camera operator continues to film the scene until no fauna remain in frame, only the new wounds in the Superorganism coated with Tridecapod digestive substances.
Initial analysis of this video by the venteriozoological community came to the conclusion that this series of events represented a heretofore-unseen immune response by F. tridecapoda to retained blood-based parasites. While the F. tridecapoda digestive system is capable of neutralizing and digesting most parasites found in the Superorganism's bloodstream, it was hypothesized that some of these parasites might be able to endure these digestive processes and possibly even thrive in them, adapting to F. tridecapoda as a secondary host. The subsequent distress/wound-forming/expulsion reaction would both prevent the death of the Tridecapod and allow the parasites to mature in a more nutrient-rich growth environment, creating a sustainable life cycle for the parasite without excess harm to its new host species. This hypothesis remains generally accepted; however, attempts at identification and characterization of the gelatinous parasitic species has produced controversy and an (unjustified and unprofessional, in this author's opinion) attitude of moral panic in certain venteriozoological circles. While the singular nature of this event, and the subsequent shutdown of the Superorganism site after the July 2007 disaster, has made firsthand observation of these parasites impossible, close analysis of the video suggests that the overall shape and visible organ structures present in the gelatinous parasites closely resemble those of the Amorphous Shame, Mustela subterrana.
The history of the study of M. subterrana has been colored by human judgment. Ever since the discovery of these creatures, their unnerving appearance, secluded solitary lifestyle, and parasitic feeding behavior has led to associations of weakness, suspicion, and above all, the shame for which it was named. This language permeates even the earliest taxonomic study of the animal: was it derived ("debased") from an earlier, more anatomically complete ("nobler") organism, or was it a byproduct of some Superorganism biological process developing into semi-independent organisms ("cosmic offal," "suckling tumors")? When DNA sequencing confirmed M. subterrana's descent from terrestrial mustelids, condemnation of the species as a "traitor" to terrestrial life only intensified; the creature's survival and adaptation in the environment of the Superorganism was viewed as somehow immoral, a capitulation, with some magically-minded commentators engaging in grossly anthropomorphic speculation about its behavior and motives. The only shame, in the opinion of this author, is the degree to which such descriptions have been condoned by the venteriozoological community. When we accept even our most prestigious researchers to describe an ordinary organism as "a beast which fled where God could not follow it" (Richardson, "On the Rats in the Walls," PBS Biology Letters 36 pp. 15-17), can we still call ourselves scientists?
Among those who continued to study M. subterrana objectively, one of the great unsolved questions about the creatures' life cycle was the matter of reproduction. Due to the nature of their anatomy, the creatures are sessile and solitary; while some M. subterrana live in relatively close proximity, with the occasional vocalization and speculated communication via chemical release into the tissue of their den walls, no organism has ever been seen cohabiting with another or engaging in copulation or other mating behavior. Dissection has revealed the presence of gonadal tissue, although the primary sexual anatomy is almost fully vestigial, presenting as a straight tube to an external gonopore from which reproductive material is presumably released. (M. subterrana remains a diploid species, with 2n = 40 similarly to its relatives in genus Mustela, but it is yet unclear whether the reproductive material takes the form of haploid gametes or diploid cells capable of asexual development.) The leading hypothesis for their reproductive cycle prior to the discovery of "Facehugger FREAKOUT!" was the emission of cells from the gonads into the capillaries of the Superorganism present in the den walls, then to the broader circulatory ecosystems, there to undergo development (whether via fertilization or asexual triggers) in a nutritious fluid substrate until the resulting juvenile was capable of self-directed swimming and burrowing into the flesh of the Superorganism in which to grow to maturity. While this hypothesis represented a viable reproductive pathway for M. subterrana, many questions remained unanswered, primarily concerning the viability of mammalian gametes and embryos achieving external fertilization and survival in a foreign biological environment, as well as the odds of successful fertilization given the traditionally low population densities of these creatures. Without samples of active gonads and reproductive cells, let alone the opportunity to observe embryonic development in either the laboratory or the field, we could only speculate about the possible adaptations used by M. subterrana to enable successful reproduction in their current form. (And successful it has been; M. subterrana populations, while low-density, are found in wide distribution through many tissue types and sub-ecosystems of the Superorganism, in some places supporting localized populations of sufficient stability to become a staple prey species in the local food web.) The evidence present in "Facehugger FREAKOUT!" suggests that the missing piece in the reproductive puzzle may be the capture of cells and development of embryos in a secondary host, such as F. tridecapoda.
The proposed new reproductive model is as follows: mature M. subterrana release reproductive cells into their den capillaries, as previously proposed, and these cells flow from peripheral to more central circulatory nodes and fluid reservoirs of the Superorganism; the concentration of cells increasing as these isolated flows merge, increasing the odds of fertilization and allowing commingling of distant populations for increased genetic diversity (in a haploid-gamete model). Various parasitic organisms feed on these centralized fluid reservoirs, such as F. tridecapoda feeding in the Tertiary Arterial Ring, and consume embryonic M. subterrana in the process. Assuming a properly adapted population in an appropriate host, these embryos survive in the gastric tract of the larger parasite, feeding off its digestive products and developing in a contained, protected environment not entirely unlike the womb of a viviparous animal. When the juvenile M. subterrana have attained a sufficient degree of development, they trigger an agitation and subsequent expulsion reaction in their host, which releases them to form flesh burrows and establish a new adult population. The natural migration patterns of most ambulatory parasites through the Superorganism provide the possibility of wide dispersal of M. subterrana despite the organisms' sessile nature.
The observant reader will observe that many of the unanswered questions from the unaided-dispersion model remain in the parasite-mediated dispersion model, namely the question of survival of mammalian gametes and embryos in an environment as foreign as the Permian Basin Superorganism and the internal organs of its extraterrestrial endoparasites. For all that M. subterrana strikes the human observer as grotesque and foreign, its genetic and cellular traits are still distinctly mammalian, and given its relatively recent loss of mobility, the time frame on this degree of reproductive adaptation is very tight. What processes could have allowed these creatures to make such a great evolutionary leap forward in sufficient time to avoid extinction once traditional sexual reproduction became untenable? Empirical evidence is of course lacking, so we must once again speculate: the intervention of the Permian Basin Superorganism itself.
One of the fundamental challenges in venteriozoology is the fact that, in contrast to mundane terrestrial ecosystems, the Permian Basin Superorganism is not a passive bystander in the lives of its flora and fauna. Evidence suggests that its vast neural network allows for fine-grained perception of its own biological systems and their inhabitants, and while the Superorganism does not exercise perfect control over its biology, it possesses both the means and the will to influence the survival of organisms in its internal biome. The line between scientific theory and magical thinking grows very fine in these circumstances, but it is difficult to examine the known natural history of M. subterrana and not conclude that the Superorganism has fostered these creatures for its own purposes. While it is impossible to know what value the Superorganism found in the ancestral Mustela that initially colonized it, the modern M. subterrana presents distinct value to its host compared to its modest nutritional needs. Most of the nutrient reserves consumed by M. subterrana are pockets of cellular exudate, and the creatures' efficient digestion and minimal excretion of simple, inert waste compounds alleviates the burden of disposal on the Superorganism's endogenous filtering systems. Indeed, this filtering may be sufficient to classify M. subterrana as a true symbiotic organism, and one can imagine the Superorganism wanting to ensure the survival of these "useful guests" and spread them to a variety of tissues and systems. While it is unclear whether the Superorganism would be able to purposefully develop an alternate reproductive cycle for these sessile mammals, or merely accelerate their natural mutation rate until a viable reproductive path arose, is unclear, but either is plausible, as is the use of modified immune cells to provide protection to M. subterrana gametes and embryos during this vulnerable portion of their life cycle. (A form of encystment seems likely and would radically improve survival rates in the secondary host.) The distress/expulsion reaction, in which the secondary host both prepares burrows for juvenile M. subterrana and releases them without harm to the juveniles or itself, seems especially likely to be mediated by the Superorganism, which requires the survival of both organisms but might, if one may indulge in a clumsy metaphor, be playing favorites. (After all, which parasite would you prefer: the one that painlessly drains away the impurities your cells release, or the one that slices its mouthparts into your arteries?)
Forgive the last paragraph, readers. For all that this author condemns the use of anthropomorphism, when one speculates on the motives of the Permian Basin Superorganism, it is a difficult thought pattern to resist.
Further evidence concerning this hypothesis, as well as observation of the full life cycle of M. subterrana, is unfortunately unfeasible as this time, but in the absence of proper fieldwork, the venteriozoological community must continue theoretical work to ensure the continuity of the field. To engage in further clumsy metaphor, we find ourselves now in the situation of the basal Mustela ancestors that first slipped into a pore of the Permian Basin Superorganism: disoriented, endangered, but yet capable of adaptation and success in our new environment. Like M. subterrana, our task is to survive and thrive off of what we are given -- a lesson all venteriologists, even those whose fields remain well-funded and lucrative, might well take to heart. Like our cousins in their flesh burrows, we must feed lightly and digest efficiently if we are to live.