Afterlife : The Strange Science of Decay

I'd call it "the amazing science of decay."

This video is awe-inspiring. It let's us see the natural process of decay.
The agents of decay - the mould, the flies, the beetles, and then still even more tinier organisms are involved in the decay process.

Among the things that truly amazes me are..

-about a kind of fungus. How they are able to grow in an ant's brain. Then it produces chemicals that controls the ant's behaviour(!) forcing it to crawl up to the top of a plant. Then the killer fungus burst out of the ant's head (!) growing a bit higher, allowing it's spores to spread.
Doesn't it sound like something coming out of a science fiction horror story??

- lignin makes wood tough, it's brownish and it makes the weight. Without lignin, woods are not heavy. Fungus feed on lignin - where the nutrients are. It's an important process of decomposition of wood. Without it doing that, the earth would be a different earth and I don't think we'll survive.

- Now, this is so amazing to me. Slime mould is a primitive life-form, the largest single cell organism on earth. Slime moulds are found to be an intelligent life form. It has no brains or no nervous system, but it can somehow work out solutions. E.g. it can find the shortest route in a maze, to get to a food source. In fact, it can design a remarkably good network in just a few hours. So good that it's even better compared to a network designed by group of brilliant engineers for the Tokyo train networks. And mind you, Tokyo has one of the most efficient and well organized network in the world, So now they are using slime moulds to design road and train networks in some western countries. And then, even computer scientists are studying the slime mould for it's radical method of processing information. Subhanallah!! this single cell organism!
(And Who you think could have taught this slime mould how to do what it does? Allahu Akbar!)
They are 'shy'- not easy to find in it's natural environment.. :p
This has got to be my favorite slime.

Without further ado, here's the video to go watch for yourself :



The conclusion in the video was that from the complex system that those living things (including us) are, when living things die, they decompose back into the very basic building blocks of life. And then, another life comes out of that building blocks. This is the process of renewal that we are all a part of.

So it makes me ponder over some verses I've read in the Qur'an:

"It is Allah Who cause the seed grain and the date stone to split and sprout. He cause the living to issue from the dead, and He is the One to cause the dead to issue from the living. That is Allah; then how are ye deluded away from the truth?"
(An'am 6:95)

"Thou causest the night to gain on the day, and thou causest the day to gain on the night; Thou bringest the Living out of the dead, and Thou bringest the dead out of the Living; and Thou givest sustenance to whom Thou pleasest, without measure."
(Ali Imran 3:27)

"And they used to say, "What! when we die and become dust and bones, shall we then indeed be raised up again?"
(Al Waqi'ah 56:47)

"Our Lord! not for naught Hast Thou created (all) this! Glory to Thee! Give us salvation from the penalty of the Fire."
(from Ali Imran 3:191)

translations by Yusuf Ali.