What ARE Bacteria?

ou know, I just don’t think people have any real idea of just what bacteria are.

I mean, when someone tells you to “Wash your hands! You don’t want all those nasty bacteria on you when you come to dinner!” I don’t think you seriously conjure up an image of a real bacteria really on your hands, let alone hundreds of millions of them. I know I don’t—I just have this abstract picture of this invisible “thing” called “bacteria” all over my hands, or the kitchen counter, or the toilet, or whatever.

But these things are very, very real. They are not “invisible.”  They are alive, and if you had, right this very minute, a very, very powerful microscope, you would be able to see bacteria, right this very minute, all over everything.

To get a better idea of the reality of bacteria in your environment, right now as you read this, imagine:

If bacteria could somehow all glow fluorescent green, all of them, all at once, what would the world look like?

Well, to put it simply, the entire world, and especially the parts of it that are alive, like plants, animals, people, YOU—would be one incandescent mass of green.

Illustration not to scale. Bacteria are larger than they appear in this picture

The green would cover everything and everybody, and if you started to dig in your garden, the soil would glow bright, bright green down as far as you could keep digging, all the way down to a mile . . . and if you weren’t exhausted by digging you could probably go down another ten miles and still the earth would be glowing green.

If you went to your kitchen right now and dribbled out one teaspoon of water from the tap, that teaspoon would contain five million bacteria.

But wait—what ARE bacteria, and why are they different than, say, viruses? Can bacteria move by themselves? Do they live a long time? Could you see them if you got a microscope?

Well, hold on there, little feller, one thing at a time!

Here’s a very enlightening thing to know about bacteria, and one that gives you an idea of just how small they are: You, as a normal everyday individual, would probably not be able to buy, rent or borrow a microscope powerful enough to see single bacteria.

Sure, you’d be able to see bacterial growth, but only when you get accumulations of billions of them—and even then, the sample would probably have to be coloured with a special lab stain, because, you see, to the naked eye bacteria are mostly completely transparent. (In fact, right now, on your naked eye, there are millions of them swimming around . . . do you see them?)

Okay, then, how long does an individual bacterium live?

Well, unless you kill them off with, say, an anti-bacterial hand soap, an individual bacterium won’t die—it will simply divide in two, and the new duo will go on living until they, too divide in two, and so on . . . neat trick, huh?

But it will take between 12 minutes and 24 hours for a bacterium to divide in two, so let’s say the average bacterium lives for around 12 hours. You can slow the bacterial growth by reducing the temperature, or stopping it altogether (mostly) by freezing. But remember; freezing the bacteria simply stops them from dividing—it doesn’t kill them. So if there were a million bacteria hanging around when you froze them, there will be a million bacteria around when you thaw them.

But then—what about viruses? Are they bacteria, just smaller?

No.

The simplest way to think about bacteria and viruses is this: they’re like the mafia. Like them or not, they’re gonna be around. But the bacteria are like the Don and his capos: they can be tough and vicious, but they can also be generous and fair-minded. The viruses, though, are like the hitmen—small, brainless and without mercy.

I know, I know . . . but what does this gotta do with ME?

Well, let’s do some simple math . . . we saw that there were five million bacteria in a single teaspoon of tap water.

So how many human cells—that’s the tiny parts that all together make up your body—are there, say, in your little toe?

Well, imagine those small green peas that you love with your roast beef and mashed potatoes. Now imagine that you took an 18-wheeler semi transport truck and filled the the back of it from the very floor to the very roof with those tiny little green peas . . . go on, cram them in there—an entire transport truck container—the same ones that you see loaded onto those massive container ships.

You would need fully three of those truck containers packed with little green peas to equal the number of cells in your little toe—about six billion peas altogether.

This thing. Times three. Six billion peas. One pinkie toe.

But we're not talking about the human cells in your pinkie toe. We're talking about the number of bacteria in your gut microbiome.

How many just bacteria—because of course there are viruses and fungi and other kinds of microbes beside bacteria in your microbiome—how many bacteria are there in a typical human gut microbiome?

Try 37 trillion.

This means that if you took your container truck packed with two billion peas, you would need 500,000 of those trucks—that's five-hundred-thousand—to get just ONE trillion peas.

Imagine 500,000 of those trucks, parked as closely as you could together . . . that would be, what, ten Central Parks, just filled wall to wall with those giant trucks? How big is Central Park? It's fucking HUGE!

But get ready, because you would need not 500,000 trucks packed to the brim with little green peas to be the equivalent of bacteria in your gut microbiome (note: I'm just including your inner number of bacteria, not the billions that live outside your body) . . .

No. You would need another eighteen million of those trucks, packed to the brim with little green peas . . . 18,500,000 container transport trucks packed with little green peas, to equal the number of bacteria in your tummy . . .

How big would that parking lot have to be, to park 18.5 million container trucks side by side, nose to tail, in one, huge unbroken mass?

Well, I figure you would need a parking lot the size of the state of Wisconsin.

How big is the state of Wisconsin?

It's fucking HUGE.