The Darwin Vermicelli, as Described by Mary Shelley, is a Bdelloid Rotifer

Abstract

Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus was published by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley two centuries ago, in 1818. The circumstances surrounding the creation of this trailblazing novel are well known, with a group of literati (most notably the Shelleys, Lord Byron, and Dr John Polidori) whiling away the appalling weather of the ‘Year without a Summer’ ¹ by discussing new ideas and reading horror stories. In her foreword to the 1831 amended edition, Mary Shelley describes a specific conversation that gave a material basis to her resurrection story. Many and long were the conversations between Lord Byron and Shelley, to which I was a devout but nearly silent listener. During one of these, various philosophical doctrines were discussed, and among others the nature of the principle of life, and whether there was any probability of its ever being discovered and communicated. They talked of the experiments of Dr Darwin, (I speak not of what the Doctor really did, or said that he did, but, as more to my purpose, of what was then spoken of as having been done by him,) who preserved a piece of vermicelli in a glass case, till by some extraordinary means it began to move with voluntary motion. ²