Who know what's up there?

eltpicsWho knows what’s up there?

Unlike most of us, I hope, professor Tony Goldberg has found more than one tick in his nose over the years. (Apparently ticks see his schnoz and think “Yes! That’s my ride out of this place.”) But one that showed up in 2012 seemed different. After he found it, he removed it from his nose, stuck it in a tube, froze it, and eventually sent it off to have its DNA sequenced.

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Turned out, no one had seen anything like it before — it’s either a tick species that’s never had its DNA examined before, or it’s an entirely new species of tick.

Goldberg would have had a better chance of determining exactly how special this particular tick was if he had let it mature further. But that would have required leaving the tick in his nose. And professor Goldberg may be a man with many exciting nose ticks, but he is not willing to sacrifice his health for science, and for that we salute him.