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peachdoxie · 6 years

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There’s a lot about the idea of the symbiotes from Venom (comics, movie, take your pick) that’s very fascinating to me, but I think the thing that’s most fascinating is the thing that makes Venom (meaning the media, not the character) different from other sharing a body fiction I’ve read or watched, regardless of if the two characters work in unison or not. There’s a very physical tactility to the relationship between symbiote and host that is really absent in most fiction where two characters share a body, at least in my experience.

Most of the times, it’s the classic “demonic possession” type where they end up being bros, where one character is the host and one character is some otherworldly being possessing them, but for the most part the host body doesn’t undergo any significant changes and the possession is metaphysical instead of physical - Greed and Ling from FMA is the prime example I can think of. For the most part, it’s just Ling’s body that Greed can augment it with his Ultimate Shield, but there’s nothing beyond that. Their communication is on some abstract level of the mind/spirit/soul/whatever, but as far as I’m aware, there’s no feeling of someone else being there. Another example of this is the Yeerk’s in Animorphs, where they take over the brain - a weird experience for sure - but after that it’s just the host and the controller, nothing more.

With Venom and the other symbiotes, from what I understand, it’s much different than that. The symbiotes don’t just bond on a metaphysical level with their hosts - like Greedling - or with just part of the host’s body - like with the Yeerks - but instead bond very physically with the entirety of the host’s body. The host and symbiote can therefore share thoughts and sensory input so that one is entirely aware of what the other can feel, see, hear, etc, etc. Of course, this isn’t unusual in sharing a body fiction, but what makes it unusual in Venom is the physical nature of the symbiotes themselves.

The symbiotes are sometimes described as “goo”, which is simultaneously accurate yet wholly inadequate an explanation of how they work. They’re amorphous and can form many different extensions of themselves, some shaped and some just tendrils of symbiote that can move things. From my understanding, the host can feel what the symbiote feels through such extensions that reach outside the host’s body. Otherwise, how would any of the hosts be able to work in conjunction with the symbiote when they’re being Venom or Riot or Sleeper or whoever if they couldn’t see through the symbiote’s eyes or feel what they feel or hear what they hear? Also, in Venom: First Host, we see one host interface with a ship through little tendrils of a symbiote (one that they’re mentally controlling yikes) which leads me to believe that - at least in that canon - the host can sense through the symbiote’s senses.

Which is just absolutely wild to me. Imagine, being host to this goo alien that you’re probably at least somewhat aware of being basically a part of your body because you can feel it in you - but more so, being able to feel though the symbiote’s senses in whatever physical form outside your body the symbiote takes. That’s gotta be weird. Some kind of physical ESP of feeling something through an alien that’s bonded with your nervous system. Like, probably something you can definitely feel, but not fully. And, of course, the fact that the symbiote is amorphous means that it’s a sensory experience that is impossible to experience as a non-host human (okay, ignoring any Mutants or whatnot in the various Marvel universes). It’s likely an especially weird experience to feel the symbiote moving through or across skin, since the host and the symbiote would be feeling both sensations at once, one through primary senses and one through secondary senses.

It also makes things like Eddie and the symbiote holding hands (multiple times in the comics) very interesting to contemplate, since it stands to reason that they both can feel the others’ hand through their own hand, but also feel their hand through the senses of the other. To some extent. I don’t know how much control there would be moderating the sharing of senses. Probably some, since I know it’s possible to “lock” the symbiote out of “higher brain functions” (Venom: 2016) and also to pretty much completely mentally dominate it (Venom: First Host). But I don’t know how much Eddie and the symbiote would do that and at this point this is too much speculation.

This isn’t to mention all of the other physical things that would come with being host to a symbiote. There’s the rapid changes in mass and volume, which are accompanied by changes in balance that come from such rapid changes, as well as issues of balance when the symbiote is stretching itself out in one direction really far. Plus there are changes in height and strength and speed which affect things, something that Eddie and Ann talked about in the movie. That’s gotta feel physically weird. And there are the parts, in the comics at least, of relying on the other’s metabolism, which in some canon means less eating and less sleeping, or at least different habits for the two. I’m also just gonna throw in there the rapid healing that’s possible through the intervention of the symbiote, which must feel very, very strange.

Anyway, in conclusion the physical tactility of Venom and co. is a really interesting concept that combines sharing a body with amorphous goo blob and I’ve never seen that done anywhere else and it makes it utterly fascinating to me.

#wow it only took me two hours and 45 minutes to write this #venom #anecdotes by peachdoxie #tactility #venom headcanon

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sciencespies · 3 years

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The Planet Has Lost Half of Its Coral Reefs Since 1950

https://sciencespies.com/nature/the-planet-has-lost-half-of-its-coral-reefs-since-1950/

The Planet Has Lost Half of Its Coral Reefs Since 1950

A diver swims over a bleached section of the Great Barrier Reef near Heron Island. Stop Adani via Flickr under [(CC BY 2.0]

Scientists have long known that reefs are in peril, but a new study published today in the journal One Earth quantifies coral losses around the world. The in-depth analysis reveals half of coral reefs have been lost since the 1950s. Scientists say climate change, overfishing and pollution are decimating these fragile ecosystems and putting communities and livelihoods in jeopardy. Their study, which is among the most comprehensive assessment of reefs and their associated biodiversity to date, underscores the rapid pace of global coral collapse.

“Coral reefs have been in decline worldwide—I think that’s pretty commonly accepted,” says Tyler Eddy, a research scientist at Memorial University of Newfoundland who co-authored the study. “We didn’t necessarily know the magnitude of how much, when we looked on a global scale, that reefs had declined.”

Coral reefs are biodiversity hotspots that provide habitat for fishes, protection for coastal communities and generate billions of dollars for fisheries and tourism. Part of the reason corals are dying is that they’re ultra-sensitive to changes in water temperature and acidity, says biologist Mary Hagedorn, who wasn’t involved in the study.

“Corals have skeletons, which makes them seem like rocks,” says Hagedorn, but they are animals with symbiotic partners. Coral polyps rely on colorful algae, called zooxanthellae, which live in their tissue and produce food the corals need to survive. When the polyps are stressed by changes in light, water temperature or acidity, they break that symbiotic relationship and expel the algae in a process called bleaching. Corals have a short window to regain their symbiotic algae, but if corals are stressed for too long, their death is irreversible. “There is not a reef on earth that has not been touched by some aspect of this global and local threat,” says Hagedorn.

Most coral assessments focus on specific regions or reefs, but Eddy and his colleagues from the University of British Columbia wanted to more complete assessment of coral losses. They used a combination of databases containing thousands of surveys of coral reef cover, marine biodiversity records and fisheries catch data to assess how each factor changed over time. They were particularly curious what dying corals meant for a reef’s “ecosystem services”—including providing habitat for diverse marine species, protecting the coast from storms and serving as a source of food and livelihood.

In addition to finding that half of living corals have died since the 1950s, researchers discovered that coral-reef-associated biodiversity dropped by 63 percent. Healthy reefs support thousands of different corals, fish and marine mammals, but bleached reefs lose their ability to support as many species. The scientists also found that catches of coral reef fishes peaked in 2002 and have been declining since then despite increasing fishing effort. And the study showed that the loss of coral species wasn’t equal across reefs—certain corals are proving more sensitive than others, leading some biologists to worry that some vulnerable coral species will be lost before they can be documented or preserved.

One challenge the team faced was finding detailed, accurate information about reef coverage in the 1950s. To deal with this limitation, they relied on coral cover estimates from their 2018 study on historical coral coverage. In the earlier work, the study authors asked more than one hundred scientists what they believed coral reef cover would have been at a given year based on existing evidence.

Eddy and his colleagues also documented the impact of the loss of coral reefs on coastal indigenous communities who have close cultural relationships with the reefs. Those communities lost ecosystems services, including reef-associated seafood they rely on for much of their diet.

The connection between human communities and reefs is a particularly important piece of this study, says ecologist Christina Hicks who wasn’t involved in the work. “It asks the question, ‘Yes, we are losing ecosystems, which is tragic, but what does do those losses mean, for people?’” she says. “Coral reefs play this really important function in supplying indigenous communities and local communities vital micronutrients, and if they lost them, it could lead to severe implications.”

The recent study didn’t assess what factors led to coral declines in recent decades, though overfishing and pollution from nearby land-based agriculture are common local stressors. Eddy and other coral experts agree the biggest threat to reefs is climate change, and note that the regions that contribute less to climate change often feel the worst impacts. Each year, the ocean absorbs around one-quarter of the carbon dioxide emitted from the burning of fossil fuels and becomes warmer, more acidic and less hospitable to corals.

“There are lots of strategies for saving coral reefs and for bringing down carbon emissions, and people often debate about what’s most effective,” says Hicks. “What this study says is that it’s even more vital that we act now, and that we act in all directions.”

Animals

Climate Change

Coral Reefs

Fish

Fishing

Indigenous Peoples

Oceans

#Nature

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