Are these bacteria dangerous?

[@lyndon1961]

Just an idea, maybe a short series on the potential harm done by releasing raw sewage into rivers... isn't that mostly microbial related.?

[@JB-ol4vz]

Fantastic footage. How ever, I spend about 80 days and nights in the wild per year in Sweden and other countrys. I fish and hunt and always eating what I catch. Often I keep the kill on my backpack for more than a week and that's both summer and winter. What I want to say is. Don't be so scared of bacteria. Yes, they can kill you but in my 50 years of traveling and eating what I've killed and not killed, eating dead animals i have found. Don't scared the youngsters away from the wild please. Sincerely JB 🇸🇪

[@MarieChardome]

very nice indeed. it would be interesting to find a predator for those spirochetes, then observe their disappearance. or how to sanitise a water body

[@mikevanderman2727]

Nice finding! They surely are long! Do you notice that they are forming a "milky-way" type of pattern accross the slide, wonder if it's random. Thanks for the video and for the biosecurity reminder.

[@mikevanderman2727]

Oh, just after commenting you mentioned it, nice, thanks.

[@stevenwilliams6258]

Always practice good hygiene with specimen handling. Good advice!

[@edithaviland8461]

Awesome thank you 😀

[@StolenPw]

What are you using for food? just some bread crumbs or like some sugar?

[@Microbehunter]

I dropped in a wheat grain, which I crushed between two spoons. These can be picked out with tweezers easily, and then dipped on a microscope slide (with the rest being returned into the water). You have to wait for about 4-6 days for interesting things to grow in the wheat grain. Other kinds of food (bread) etc would certainly also work, but they are not stable and fall apart, and are therefore not as practical.

[@sean95690]

Hi is there anyway to identify bacteria or sewage with a microscope? Here in the UK sadly the government is allowing companies to do this again. Although the new government are taking steps to srmtop it again thanks Oliver.

[@Microbehunter]

No possibility to do identification with a microscope. To identify the type of bacteria present, you have to culture them, and/or do biochemical tests or DNA studies.

[@MincedWords]

You got a Twt Microbehunter?

[@stolciusvonstolcenberg5581]

Oliver, your observation is commendable, but let’s allow logic to guide us to the answer. Let’s examine the facts. Paramecia range from 50 to 250 microns in length. If the spirochetes you observed are "roughly the same size" as the paramecia, their minimum length would be around 50 microns. Now, pathogenic spirochetes - unless I'm mistaken - typically don’t exceed 30 microns, and those that do reach larger sizes, like Spirochaeta plicatilis, which can grow up to 500 microns, are generally non-pathogenic and found in aquatic environments. In summary, this combination of observations suggests that the spirochetes you’ve encountered most likely belong to a non-pathogenic species, adapted to live in stagnant water like that from which the sample was taken. Therefore, there’s no cause for clinical concern, only an opportunity to appreciate the remarkable microbiological diversity visible under the microscope. Anyway, applying the precautionary principle and safely disposing of the sample was a sound approach; in microbiology, careful handling of unknown organisms is essential.

[@MarieChardome]

@@stolciusvonstolcenberg5581 i get your point and thank you. hopefully they are not babies of the pathogenic ones though! anyway, for us hobbyists or newbies, it is never wrong to be over- cautious. i will treat everything looking curlywurly i encounter, with care.

[@stolciusvonstolcenberg5581]

​@@MarieChardome I totally agree with you, MarieChardome: when dealing with microbial life, it’s much better to be overly cautious than reckless! :-) And this applies not only to the corkscrew-shaped bacteria captured in Oliver’s video (though it’s likely that the only pathogenic spirochete found in ponds would be Leptospira, which typically ranges from 6 to 20 microns in length, while Borrelia and Treponema are generally specific pathogens that thrive only in animal tissues) but to all types, as a single drop of stagnant water could harbor: bacilli like Clostridium tetani, Escherichia coli and Salmonella, as well as cocci like MRSA (even though ponds are not their preferred habitat), and many other “aliens” that are far from friendly! :-)

[@MarieChardome]

@@stolciusvonstolcenberg5581 fascinating