The Discovery

On December 10, 2010, an amateur Russian astronomer named Leonid Elenin discovered a long-period comet in the U.S. state of New Mexico. The near-earth object was given the name of Elenin and was estimated to be 3-4 km in diameter. Almost immediately after the discovery was announced, articles began to appear on the Internet that claimed the comet was dangerous to Earth. People began to make connections between Elenin and extinction level events.

What is a Comet?

In ancient history, comets were traditionally considered to be bad omens. They are small Solar System bodies (SSSB) that will display a visible coma (a thin, fuzzy, temporary atmosphere) when close to the Sun. The main difference between an asteroid and a comet is that a comet shows a coma. Asteroids are also thought to have a different origin from comets, having formed inside the orbit of Jupiter rather than in the outer Solar System. This gives the orbital history of comets more importance.

“Parasites” is admittedly a pretty damn broad umbrella

“Parasites” is admittedly a pretty damn broad umbrella. You can find them within every phylum of every kingdom of life on our planet, they easily outnumber non-parasitic or “free living” lifeforms and almost nothing lives entirely free from their influence. The very word “parasite” is associated with uselessness, and even science was once guilty of the belief that parasites were “lower” on the evolutionary ladder. Today, however, biologists are waking up to the incredible sophistication and significant ecological impact of parasitic organisms. Nearly every wild animal on this planet has parasites feeding and breeding inside it as we speak, influencing the host’s health and even behavior to better suit their needs. It may sound disturbing, but as this has been going on since the dawn of life as we know it, it should have always been obvious that they’re as much a part of nature’s delicate balance as any other form of life, even regulating entire food webs and possibly influencing evolution itself. Most have adapted to cause as little harm to hosts as possible (why kill your own delicious, delicious house?) and even those that haven’t are still playing their part in population control. Parasites are just the eyeless, brainless little governors of ecoville, working hard on the inside to keep those cheetahs running on time.

Maggots - The most nauseating, abhorrent organisms in nature

The very thought of fly larvae squirming around in a corpse is difficult for some people to stomach. It seems like they’re often regarded as one of the most nauseating, abhorrent organisms in nature, largely due to the whole “squirming around in corpses” thing, but the same reasons people detest them are the same reasons they shouldn’t. A dead body is a ticking time bomb of contagious diseases, and no other scavenger can even come close to the importance of maggots. Everything about these little critters – shape, size, squirminess, sliminess and even that ghostly pale coloration – is adapted for maximum efficiency carcass removal, scouring every nook and cranny of a skeleton for the tiniest scraps of soft tissue. Thanks to maggots, most carcasses only lie around in the wilderness for a few weeks before only bones remain, while other processes of decomposition would have them festering for months. Maggot activity is even somewhat antiseptic, destroying the bacteria they’re basically competing with for food. The bottom line is…would you rather every animal dropping dead every moment of every day nourish several hundred flies or several million Anthrax bacteria?

Everyone hates cockroaches

 Everyone hates cockroaches! They’re dirty, nasty, parasites who only exist to live in our garbage, right?! Can there possibly be anything good about them? Do I still have to answer that at this point? The order Blattodea has over 30,000 known species, yet only around a dozen or so have the special characteristics to thrive in our homes – characteristics which make them useful scavengers in the wild. Most roaches prefer a more conventional insect life outdoors, where they help to recycle decaying vegetation, pollinate plants, and in some cases even prey on more harmful insects. Even those few “pest” species aren’t as filthy as you think…in fact, they’re only ever as filthy as their surroundings, and they’re just as likely to live in perfectly sanitary conditions as in decaying garbage. House roaches only have the potential to spread disease primarily by walking through something germ-ridden (like an unkempt kitchen trash bin) and accidentally tracking it onto your food, which is actually rather unlikely; germs don’t cling to their bodies all that easily, and the little neat-freaks groom themselves almost constantly.  Yes, believe it or not, roaches practice better hygiene than a lot of humans.

Dolphins are sweet

What…you thought all of these were going to be negative misconceptions? Many of us unfortunately have it in our heads that while Sharks are mindless, ravenous eating machines, Dolphins are sweet, playful little sea-people, ready to protect us from those big, bad sharks and do fun tricks for our amusement. Dolphins, however, are predators themselves; lethally powerful, cunningly intelligent, fiercely territorial, pack hunting flesh-eaters. Animals live by very different rules, and while it isn’t fair to categorize them as “good” or “bad,” it’s hard to find dolphins very cute when they have been observed tormenting, killing and even sexually assaulting other animals for often unclear reasons, including young pups of their own species, and attacks on humans are by no means unheard of.
Maybe they’re only smiling so much at their own perverse fantasies.

One of nature’s most feared predators

One of nature’s most feared predators, sharks are generally portrayed by the media as ravenous, unfeeling jaws and teeth that happen to have animals attached to them. World-wide, however, the typical year sees under a dozen human deaths by shark attack, as opposed to thousands of deaths by drowning or other swimming accidents. Sharks are quite a bit more intelligent than most people give them credit for, and often avoid prey as unfamiliar as humans. Predation by sharks is of great importance to the health of fish populations, maintaining the balance necessary for many different species to thrive in the same environment, and they’re far from brainless eating machines – some species even demonstrate play behavior and sharks in captivity may be possible to “tame.”