My favourite science writer, Ed Yong, explores sponges for the New Yorker in an article entitled “Consider the Sponge”. Sponges are deceptively simple creatures with jelly-like interiors and no symmetry. They are, however, covered in microbes which have provided treatments for leukemia, herpes, breast cancer, and a drug that fights HIV/AIDS. Consider the sponge, indeed!
Yong explains that
Last month, in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution, a group of scientists published a tub-thumping defense of sponges and other supposedly simple animals. In their paper, Casey Dunn, Sally Leys, and Steve Haddock argue that humans have systematically underestimated these creatures, largely because of our innate bias against organisms outside our taxonomic clique.
… But these creatures, according to Dunn, Leys, and Haddock, are not primitive relics; they are modern animals that excel at their own particular life styles. By ignoring them, we blind ourselves to a wondrous hidden biology and get a misleading view of evolution.
Sponges are wonderful, it turns out, and Yong’s article is wonderfully written. Read the full article here.
