Hi again.
Here are three more microscope videos. These are from a drop of drain water. Magnification factor x400.
The first one shows a huge critter... well, at 70 microns across he's huge compared to everything else present.
I'm not exactly sure what this guy is... a ciliated protozoa of some sort? Perhaps someone more knowledgable can identify it. I'm just going to go ahead and call him Kevin.
This second video is the same critter again but some time later.
The drop of water under the coverslip started to spread out more and so became thinner. As a result you will notice there is a definite improvement in the image quality and you can see more detail inside the cell.
The bright moving line is the air-water interface moving. It's like a reverse tsunami.
As it comes in contact with Kevin, it starts to do some damage. The forces involved are tiny but not when you're only a microbe. You will notice some cilia (the wavy arms) get torn off and towards the end some cell contents gets squeezed out. The video doesn't show it but eventually Kevin got completely squashed.
RIP Kevin.
The final video shows a paramecium part way through cell division. Sadly it (they) kept swimming away so I missed the final separation. Just shy I guess. It would have taken a while anyway.
I hope you enjoyed.
Bye for now.
Richard
