DailyDirt: Bizarre Sea Life

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Wed, Aug 14th 2013 5:00pm — Joyce Hung

Our oceans harbor some of the world's most bizarre lifeforms, like alien-like isopods, vampire squid, and blobfish. In fact, one of the aliens featured in the movie "Men in Black 3" was closely modeled on the creepy and weird-looking blobfish. Here are a few more examples of deep sea creatures that are the stuff of nightmares.

Pyrosomes are like the Borg of the sea. Resembling a giant translucent wind sock, pyrosomes can grow up to 60 feet long, and they consist of hundreds or thousands of individual zooid clones, connected together by a gelatinous tunic, working together to propel the entire colony through the water. Furthermore, they're bioluminescent, with each individual zooid capable of emitting light. [url]
The mantis shrimp is a beautifully colored sea creature that has 16 color-receptive cones (humans have only 3). But you might want to think twice before petting one, considering they're one of the most creatively violent animals on the planet, with their two raptorial appendages able to strike with 1,500 Newtons of force, dismembering their prey in less than 0.003 seconds. And you probably don't want to keep one as a pet either, since they can apparently break aquarium glass, too. [url]
Megalodicopia hians is a predatory sea squirt that waits for small marine animals to drift or swim into its translucent hood-shaped mouth. Most sea squirts are filter feeders, but this one has a greatly enlarged syphon that acts like a trap, opening to allow prey to enter, and then snapping shut to trap them. Apparently, they're our distant relatives, as both humans and sea squirts belong to the phylum Chordata. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: biology, bioluminescent, bizarre, creatures, mantis shrimp, marine animals, pyrosomes, sea life, sea squirt, species

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Anonymous Coward, 14 Aug 2013 @ 5:12pm

borg of the sea?
wouldn't that mean it assimilated other animals in the ocean?
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- Anonymous Coward, 15 Aug 2013 @ 4:09am
  
  Re: borg of the sea?
  Probably just a reference to "hivemind"
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arcan, 14 Aug 2013 @ 8:55pm

just hope no one manages to supersize the mantis shrimp.
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- Anonymous Coward, 15 Aug 2013 @ 4:13am
  
  Re:
  Giant enemy mantis shrimp, attack it's weak point for massive damage!
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Ninja (profile), 15 Aug 2013 @ 5:09am

That mantis shrimp is quite beautifully colored. I think the term "bizarre" is kind of useless (this is not criticism towards the article). We label bizarre anything that don't fit our patterns of 'beauty' or something. But it's simply natural. I'd call those "fascinating" (and I'm not into biology by any means!)
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Aug 2013 @ 6:03am

Bizarre non-existent Sea Life:

A bit off topic, but "The Discovery Channel" recent airing of Megalodon as though it were a documentary is quite outrageous.

Not sure what viewers were supposed to be discovering, other than Discovery Channel airs bullshit.
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Aug 2013 @ 12:09pm

the oatmeal taught me about the mantis shrimp

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/mantis_shrimp
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