Protozoans in Popular Culture





These are some references to protozoa I have found in movies, books, and music over the years.



I heartily recommend Professor Larry Simpson's Protist Web Alert, which features links to several pages with protozoans in art & literature, including artistic photographs of protozoans!

They say before he went away He got it all on tape Giant paramecium And big amoebae shapes Electric Rock Music

These lines from The Ass Ponys' "Place Out There" probably refer to Trevor James Constable's filming of "critters," giant protozoans that invisibly inhabit the atmosphere.

“Idealização da humanidade futura” Augusto dos Anjos Rugia nos meus centros cerebrais A multidão dos séculos futuros – Homens que a herança de ímpetos impuros Tornorá etnicamente irracionais! – Não sei que livro, em letras garrafais, Meus olhos liam! Ho humus dos monturos, Realizavam-se os partos mais obscuros, Dentre as genealogias animais! Como quem esmigalha protozoários Meti todos os dedos mercenários Na consciência daquela multidão… E, em vez de achar a luz que os céus inflama, Somente achei moléculas de lama E a mosca alegre da putrefação! Eu e outras poesias

The Brazilian poet Augusto dos Anjos uses protozoans as a metaphor for humanity's misery, in this sonnet.

Our planet, before the age of written history, had its races of savages, like the generations of sour paste, or the animalcules that wiggle and bite in a drop of putrid water. Who cares for these or their wars? Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his journal, July, 1844, cited in Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson, edited by Stephen E. Whicher, p. 277.

Ralph Waldo Emerson puts aside his usually enlightened self and uses the microscopic creatures in a drop of water to belittles peoples at a more "primitive" stage of existence than that enjoyed by Europeans in North America.



























Though not particularly meaningful, John Kennedy Toole's use of paramecium in this passage is nonetheless very imaginative and colorful:

A Confederacy of Dunces
"'May I select my own?' Ignatius asked, peering down over the top of the pot. In the boiling water the frankfurters swished and lashed like artificially colored and magnified paramecia."

As he lies on his deathbed, Artemio Cruz looks at evolutionary history as a struggle for existence, beginning with the amoeba, which here, like other creatures, symbolizes the desire to survive, defined as overcoming others and surviving to reproduce--classic Darwinism, in fact:

You will survive, not because you are the strongest, but because of the dark luck of an ever colder universe in which only those organisms that know how to maintain their body temperature when that of the environment falls will survive, those organisms that concentrate that frontal mass of nerve tissue and can foresee danger, search for food, organize their movement, direct their swimming in the circular, proliferating ocean teaming with origins. The dead and lost species will stay at the bottom of the sea, your sisters, millions of sisters that did not emerge from the water with their five contractile stars, their five fingers sunk into the other shore, terra firma, the islands of the dawn. You will emerge crossed with amoeba, reptile, and bird, the birds which will launch themselves from the neew peaks to smash in the new abysses...
Carlos Fuentes, The Death of Artemio Cruz

I had forgotten that The Onion had also come up with the idea for haiku about protozoa in their article titled 'Cryptosporidium Daze' Fails to Attract Visitors!

The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter not only inspired me to have a fantastic dream about protozoa the first time I heard it, but also contains the wonderful "A Very Cellular Song," which features life as an amoeba as an atemporal but passionless utopia.

The Best of James Blish features a story about humanoids living among protozoa.

Protozoa have not been as popular as monsters as have dinosaurs, giant insects, or humanoid aliens, but here are a few movies and stories that feature protozoa, mostly amoeboids, as monsters. For example, Arment Biological Press features a story about a giant amoeboid.

The Monster from the Ocean Floor

The Blob - Criterion Collection

The Angry Red Planet

"From Beyond", in The Lurking Fear and Other Stories


The creatures in this movie are not, ultimately, monsters, and the sense of wonder that the protagonist felt when he saw the creatures of The Abyss (Single Disc Edition) is similar to mine when I find something new in the world beneath the microscope. And some of them look very much like protozoans.

Protozoa Haiku			Protozoa Links
Protozoa in Popular Culture
Music to Soothe Savage Protozoans			Protozoa Equipment and Books

© 2002 Hermester Barrington


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