Oliver St Cyr

This animation illustrates the, albeit highly stylized and simplified due to illustrative and empathetic purposes, path and process the Naegleria Fowleri amoeba takes to the brain. The amoeba generally lives in warm water like lakes, rivers, or other reservoirs, and sometimes pools. When that water is splashed on someone’s face, the amoeba can get inhaled through the nose, presumably an even more jarring experience for the amoeba than the human. Then unsure where it is or what to do it follows the nasal cavity. I show the amoeba interacting with acetylcholine, once again in a symbolic representation, where it touches the neurotransmitter, absorbs it, or consumes it, and is attracted to it. The amoeba has receptors for acetylcholine and is drawn to its source. So the amoeba follows the little yellow acetylcholine blobs, until it encounters phagocytic white blood cells, like neutrophils, which give it a sting. The amoeba then figures out ways to outrun or otherwise fight them off. Then after following an extended and once again symbolic representation of the nasal cavity, the amoeba, in line with a cymbal crash, breaks through a membrane of olfactory nerves to reach the brain. Once there, it notices delectable sacs releasing the acetylcholine it’s been following, neurons, and eats them. The unfortunate side effect of the little guy’s journey is that somebody dies. The goal of this animation is to try to think about this matter in a less homocentric view. Science and the media covering creatures like Naegleria Fowleri can be extremely homocentric. Of course, because humans are the ones making science and media, and why would we care about a murderous amoeba? It has no idea it’s killing a person. It gets siphoned into a hairy, fleshy, mucousy, tunnel, attacked by phagocytes trying to dissolve it with chemicals or rip it apart, and is only trying to find food to survive. It’s our primitive, system one psychology that tells us the amoeba is evil, but with some higher level system two reasoning and empathic practice, we can understand that all animals and plants on earth are trying to survive at all costs, and if you thought a brain-eating amoeba was a monster for the rare occasion of incidental death, how many microorganisms have you killed without even noticing?