It’s not Halo, but damn it’s cool! We are like Hunters

In the Halo Universe Lekgolo are a mass of eel or worm-like creatures that form together with a single consciousness, into the hulking beast known as Hunters or Mgalekgolo. Out of the approximately 100 trillion cells that make up the human body, only about 10 percent of them are actually human. The rest are from aliens within us.

Our symbiotic relationship with these organisms allow the human body to survive. Without them, a body will cease to function. Many people know that we need bacteria to help us digest foods and that some bacterias protect us from other microbes infecting us, but did you know that there are microbes that extract vitamins and nutrients and ones that produce anti-inflammatory compounds? Studies have even shown that the ability of a human fetus to develop into a baby was probably developed as part of the coexistence with viruses, which put into our DNA the coding necessary for the process.

Last year the Human Microbiome Project released it’s findings on five years of research conducted by over 200 scientists who set out to map the various microorganisms whose host is the human body. They identified over 10,000 different species of microbes, including some never seen before. Those microbes have over 8 million genes, which is more than 300 times the number of human genes found in a body.

 

Here are some fascinating facts in this short video about genes.

 

But perhaps one of the strangest creatures within us are our own white blood cells. White blood cells actually physically hunt down, engulf, than eradicate dangerous microbiomes in a process like a mini nuclear attack called an oxidative burst. This process can also be used against organisms too large for the white blood cell, or macrophage, to engulf.

Crazy.

Some people believe that white blood cells are actually an entire separate alien organism. They certainly appear alive and “conscious” as you watch them hunt down and consume their prey. Watch a white blood cell chase down a streptococcus in this video.

 

 

So the next time you kill a Hunter and it’s worms leak out, don’t forget: you’re full of ’em, too.

 

Sources: npr.org, halo.wikia.com, genome.gov, Discover Magazine, Cells Alive