The Complicated Sex Lives of Hydra 

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This is one of my favorite comfort shows. Thanks to everyone who makes it possible and always working to put out such amazing content

Hank just casually showing up absolutely everywhere and repeatedly making my day.

I am always glad to play a few videos of Microcosmos when I have a migraine. Hank's voice tends to calm and center me,the background music is pleasant and the visuals are relaxing undulating colors. ( I can always go back again and actually watch/ listen). 5/29/23 Hank I hope you are fairing well this week 😊.

I will always have a soft spot for Hydra oligactis! I did my bachelor thesis on them and was lucky enough to publish it. Such cool and strange animals! A little annoying to keep in the lab though hehe

I assume "Sex, Butts, & Immortality" will be the name of Hank's next album

If your old friend @zefrank hasn't made a Hydra video he really should. Those spinning balls are amazing. How they rotate so fast and either stop or instantly change the spin is fun to watch

_Hydra_ are some of the most awesome denizens of the tiny world. Good to see them getting more rep here.

Reading the title incorrectly as “butt sex, immortality” gives a wildly different impression of what the video was about 😂

Hank Green is like if Willy Wonka was a scientist mixed with the calm of a Bob Ross painting tutorial.

I have head that in some studys it was found out that hydras in fact age over time. They regenerate slower and slower and can die of old age too.

"How was your date?" "Ugh... he was all hands., and into butt-stuff."

"Sex, Butts, and Immortality" sounds like the title of an avante-garde music album

Lack of senescence is both a blessing (on an individual level) and a curse (for anything at the top of the food chain, like humans). Having just completed my 60th solar orbit and having led an active, event-filled life, I'm at this point full of shrapnel and many broken bones that have healed with varying degrees of success, plus ALL my joints have been sorely abused. If I'd known I would live so long, which I never desired and in fact attempted to prevent by my chosen professions, I'd have taken better care of myself. So yeah, I give props to the hydrae for not having to deal with the increasing insults of old age. But OTOH, there are already, what, 8 BILLION of us at last count? And everybody agrees that's way too many. On land at least, we have no natural predators apart from disease-causing microbes, so nothing but murder, accident, disease, and aging kills us. So do you really want to grant immorality to humanity as a whole? And if you do, then do you spay and neuter everybody then alive so that the population slowly declines due to accident and murder? Or do you just give immortality to the wealthy elite who have no qualifications to be god-kings other than being rich and seeking personal aggrandizement? IOW, Warhammer 40K made real? So, when I wake up with aches and pains, I envy the ageless hydrae. But when I actually think about it, I realize my aches and pains are honorable scars and I'm still here despite all life has thrown at me. Old age isn't for the weak. Not only because the weak died off earlier as Darwin dictates, but because it's the ultimate struggle. Which we're all going to lose, but we're only in that ring because we fought our way into it over decades, which is something of an accomplishment. But Father Time and Old Man Death are undefeated. So prepare to give them a good fight, maintain your dignity as long as you can, and then accept the inevitable outcome. All that said, I do NOT envy the hydrae at all for their self-hurting butt-mouth. Even if I had to rip my lips apart every time I wanted to poop or eat, I could tolerate that except that the poop would have to roll out over my taste buds. I hope hydrae have none of those, at least in their cul-de-sac of a digestive system :)

Hydra sex is way more wild than I expected.

I'd think the hydra dying when reproducing in a cold environment makes a lot of sense: not only is there a bigger challenge ahead, cold environments fundamentally have less energy/food, so clearing space for the newer generation might be required for there to be enough food.

Nice to hear Hank's voice 😊

Best title ever

❤ Hank...this is the channel I fell in love with you!

Senescence helps prevent parents from competing with children. Perhaps this allows species to adopt new mutations and more quickly adapt to changes in environment.

deep and profound - you ask us to think and question on multiple levels!

I have a bunch of Hydra viridissima on my windowsill aquarium right now. Love them

Going off the thumbnail, that Hydra has got it all

good to hear your voice man..be good

Get Better Hank!

It makes kind of sense to me. If the Hydra clones itself the offspring is equal to the parent because they share the same DNA. But if they sexually reproduce one of the offspring can be better adapted so it might make sense to focus more energy into producing offspring rather than surviving as an individual and possibly competing with your own offspring. But then again I guess there are plenty of species that die of old age without reproducing sexually.

1:35 the automatic subtitles say "fatalistic" and that fits as well, haha

Fantastic job here, Microcosmos team!

Love u Hank

Really enjoying the format of this show. Like the podcast accompanied with the microscope fortage

Thank you Squarespace

5:02 Very relatable....

Thumbnail is all three things perpetually on my mind.

You can ask the same immortality question of bacteria which only reproduce by binary fission. They've been dividing for a gazillion years... so, immortal? If we're talking about a SINGLE cell living WITHOUT renewing by division or whatnot... then the closest we can get are those bacteria found deep in the rocks of the crust, which may not divide for a MILLION YEARS.

oh also don't forget the aboral pore of hydra! it doesn't get mentioned much, and it's worth discussing the importance or innocuity of it for the sake of evolution and physiology.

I love when the hydras make themselves short and stout!

*Wolverine:* _punctures a millimeter of skin_ "Hurts every time." 😤 *Hydra:* _tears face/butthole open_

Seems like a mix of evolution for survival, and random changes. It will be more interesting when we have colonies of hydras and other species living in space, and perhaps on the moons of Saturn along with Earth's moon.

Hydra: I am disinterested in your ability to recognize patterns, giant

Three of my favorite subjects.

Best comment section on RU-vid

I've always been fascinated with hydra, they seem like they have so much potential for scifi creatures

6:23 - "warm crisis" sounds like some kind of euphemism for global warming :P

Hydra on cold water "oh the water is too cold I'm too depressed to eat let's just sex and die" 😂

Annoying nature, always ruining human's plans of neatly filing it away into little boxes.

Butts. The gateway towards interest in science.

one of my fav animals tbh so cool so strong so awsome

Just a Wonderfull video , this made my day ....THANKS

i can't wait to git my microscope and sample my swamp :)

for a moment i was expecting a remix of that KNOWER song

Is mouth legs?

Hi. Which microscope are you using? I am looking to buy one for home use and I am kind of confused which one to buy. Also I have noticed that most of your videos don't exceed 1000x. I am assuming that would be enough magnification to see what you see? Many thanks in advance.

Aging is like planned obsolescence, it's supposed break down to make room in the market for the newer models. I don't think there is a physical reason an organism must die, sure you have the telomeres and accumulated dna damage but there are systems that can keep these thing in check forever... but they don't, imo aging is an evolved survival strategy for a species, the reason? well the obvious one is making some space in the niche for the new generation, but i might have many more like to control parasites or predators populations or maybe it's a way to ensure a species puts enough energy into keeping their reproductive cycle evolving fast enough for their offspring to still be able to adapt to the changing environment. Imagine an impossible hypothetical world where there the surface is totally leveled and the is one inch of water, the only species are inmortal mangroves like trees and they completely block out the sun, the seeds fall sprout but seedling never fully develop because the lack of sunlight, slowly through milenia the water level rises, this has no effect on the trees because they are tall and strong but the seeds eventually can't anchor themselves in the mud because their spike isn't long enough to reach it. After a long long time something happens, a weather phenomenon or something, all the trees but a few lucky ones die and there is enough sunlight for the seedlings to develop, but they can't because the water level is to high for them to anchor themselves. The remaining trees keep living, maybe forever, they keep producing a ton of seeds but the niche for the life stage of the seedlings is gone and there isn't enough genetic variation in the length of the seeds for them to reach the mud and never again does a new tree ever reach maturity and produce new longer seeds. If the trees weren't biologically immortal the species as a whole would have been fine because their reproductive strategy would be constantly tested to adapt to the changing water levels. Water level is just an example, it could be salinity or temperature or whatever.

Hank, Hope you're feeling ok today

Variation according to an environment under varying conditions as a whole so on a quantumcosmic scale our evolutionary path established according to our very nature as living beings no matter what changes are being made going against the grain machines being a degenerate trade-off life keeping to its perfect rhythm to reach its destination is most hardy and cannot be compromised!

Hail Hydra!

Hahahaha luv it . Butts n poop make me insanely crazy and loose the plot every time 8 hear the words. Omgoshhhhh .hydra butts n poopa just saying! Hahaha

Hank❤

I’m wondering if this channel’s done anything on arrow worms, mud dragons, or other meiofauna. From: a Chaetognatha and other meiofauna fan.

How to properly define a butt: if it resembles Baltimore... ;D

hegel and aristotle would have loved this

imagine if we would also not age or age significantly slower like abraham in the bible or so idk if we would do infinite semen retention, but because no one does it we dont know

Hope Hank comes back

these guys are definitely cool, but they destroyed my attempts at a fairy shrimp culture for feeding my fish because they ate every single one... :")

Please korean or Japanese subtitles.

The aging is just a evolutionary feature, clearly the particular species has an annual lifecycle, most likely because it would not be likely to survive the winter conditions anyway, so it makes sense to put 100% of its resources available into sexual reproduction, resulting in more offspring produced; versus a perennial species that will never devote all its resources into reproduction thus produce fewer offspring. And when adverse enough condition occurs that will kill a large enough amount of adult individuals the annual species will always out compete the perennial ones.

Hydra oligactis: “I choose a mortal life.”

These names are becoming unhinged 😭 next title, “Feet, Eat, Micros meet”

So jellyfish contain hydras ?

Read the thumbnail and thought this was a documentary about Aleister Crowley.

What's the takeout?

The reason for the decline can be agrued for the good of species as a whole. If the hydra nevers dies from old age, then how are the new babies supposed to grow up. They'll be competing for the same resources with the parents. Sexual reproduction is for change in the species because it's stressfull. Asexual reproduction is for stasis because there is no need for change.

I’m literally done with y’all lol 😂

Hail

Sup Hank

So what I’m hearing is I need to come back as a hydra if I’m gonna be gay.

EXCUSEEEEEEEEE MEEEE!!!! Again with mentioning in the title or description about butts THEN HAVE THE AUDACITY NOT TO SHOW ME A BUTT!!!! Hank your doing me a doosie I'll always keep watching although I'm getting quite annoyed at the lack of buttholes and pooping...

Hank, you are talking quickly in this one.

Great thumbnail, but now I have to change the title of my autobiography.

Hahaha. And gonads, don't even!

When the hydra tears it's mouth/anus open to eat or excrete, how does it keep from getting infected?

Anyone else hear Markiplier's voice "Have you heard of the ship of Theseus?"

I read: sex, butt & immorality

No kill the idra

I'm out

¿Inchanted

He's just like me fr

So buttsex = immortallityn

Thanks🔬💚🦠

vierkantruimte

Hail hydra? *Alondro is so lame....*

Oh fuck we can compare the so called humans with Hydra's. Just hydras are some how much criative and evoluted in nature

first? :)

God I wish that was me

Amazing Video! :) 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏 ❤❤ 💖💖