A study of hailstones has found large numbers of bacteria at their cores. It turns out that the bacteria help create the snow and hail, since their coating of protein causes water to freeze at relatively warm temperatures. In fact, bacteria works so well that it’s used in snow-making machines.
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Not by racial types–not even by blood types–but by BACTERIA types. Each human being has thousands of different species of microbes living on our bodies, but there are just THREE main types in our guts (NOTE: Subscribers can still listen to this show). And it’s the bacteria in our guts that do the final job of digesting our food.
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While we desperately wage war against bacteria by developing new varieties of antibiotics, there’s at least SOME good news: some types of bacteria wage a kind of "civil war" against EACH OTHER. There are predators in the bacterial world that consume other bacteria, much as predators attack prey in the animal world. Some of these predator microbes might be put to work against disease-causing bacteria that have become resistant to antibiotics. Biologist Daniel Kadouri says that his team focused on two bacteria that were chosen because they are true predators. He says, "They actually have to consume other bacteria in order to complete their life cycles. They have a great ability to seek out other bacteria, invade them, grow in or on them, and kill them."
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Bacteria can be dangerous, but they can also be useful. New research has discovered that these tiny life forms have a sense of smell. Could this be used to keep away the ones we DON’T want?
Scientists have demonstrated that a bacterium commonly found in soil can smell and react to ammonia in the air. Bacteria have already shown that they have the ability to react to light and touch, albeit in primitive ways.
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