It’s everywhere..

I’m talking about bacteria, the dominant form of life on earth. Don’t believe me? Consider this: The biomass of bacteria exceeds that of all other plant and animal life combined.

Bacteria can evolve to eat anything, including asphalt, plastics and even nuclear waste.

Bacteria can live in scorching deserts, the freezing arctic, at the bottom of the ocean, or even in space. They also live on, and in, most other life on Earth. Including us.

We have lots of bacteria in, and on us. And I mean LOTS. According to wikipedia:

There are approximately ten times as many bacterial cells in the human flora as there are human cells in the body, with large numbers of bacteria on the skin and as gut flora.^[10]

So why, then, don’t bacteria rule the world? Well, maybe they do. We need them for our digestive system to function properly, and with the speed at which they evolve, it might not be long before we need them for other things, too.

What if we needed certain bacteria in our eyes to see properly, or in our lungs to breathe properly? Or even in our semen or wombs to conceive properly? At this point, bacteria would have control over us.

But bacteria are just tiny little groups of cells! you say. What could they do? Well, not exactly. So called microbial intelligence has been observed and documented, wherein groups of bacteria do things which require a coordination between the entire colony.

Perhaps it’s not long before we are all slaves to the microbes, the original life on this planet. We are usurpers in their domain, and maybe have yet to be noticed by them as a threat. Or maybe we have already been noticed, and simply are not aware of the actions being taken against us.

Could bacteria manipulate a brain? If bacteria in my bloodstream or wherever else made a concerted effort, could they change my desires or opinions or actions?

Would I ever know if they were?