Mystery Photo
What in the world is it?
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| Don’t peek at the answer until you’ve given this a good try! Then, scroll down a bit
and the truth will be revealed to you.
What In the World Is It? You might guessed. It’s a bacterium. This one, Leptospira, causes serious disease in livestock. Not all bacteria are bad, however. For instance, certain bacteria, the actinomycetes, produce antibiotics; others live in harmony inside your guts or elsewhere in your body, converting nitrogen into a usable form. You know what puts that zesty tang in your yogurt and the sour in sourdough bread? Yup. Bacteria. Bacteria make up the base of the food web in many environments. Bacteria are of such immense importance because of their extreme flexibility, capacity for rapid growth and reproduction, and great age – the oldest fossils known, nearly 3.5 billion years old, are fossils of bacteria-like organisms. Back |