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During her teenage years in Goalpara district of Assam, Wimarithy Marak helped her family collect water from a dug well near their house every day. Often, she would notice tiny organisms in the bucket, which she would simply discard before using the water.
It was not until Marak was completing her doctoral research at the Assam Don Bosco University, Guwahati, in 2020 that she recalled one organism that she often saw in the dugwell’s waters, which appeared to “dance” in the bucket. “I always thought it was a worm or an insect but never paid attention to it,” she tells Down To Earth (DTE), adding, “My dissertation subject was on fish diversity in the Jinari river of Goalpora, and during the research I started to think whether the ‘worm’ was in fact a fish.”
This article was originally published in the July 16-31, 2026 print edition of Down To Earth
