Tuesday, December 22, 2009
The real Purple People Eater
Imagine an animal that looks like a giant glowing wind-sock, large enough for a man to swim through. Sci-fi? Nope, it's a Pyrosome. One of Nature's strangest creatures... actually a colony, with thousands of individual animals woven together and loosely cooperating. It belongs to the Ascidians, a phylum fairly close to vertebrates. Many of the Ascidians start life as a free-swimming tadpole, looking much like a frog or fish larva; but when they grow up they lose all the vertebrate parts and become simple cup-like objects with no bones or brains. (Well, actually this isn't so strange: it's just like the life cycle of Senators.)
I'd heard of Ascidians before, but had no idea of their bizarre and luminous variety!
Wondering: was this the "whale" that swallowed Jonah and then let him out intact? ¶ 1:21 PM
I'd heard of Ascidians before, but had no idea of their bizarre and luminous variety!
Wondering: was this the "whale" that swallowed Jonah and then let him out intact? ¶ 1:21 PM
