New carnivorous sea squirt discovered
This character is a newly discovered sea squirt that, unlike almost all other sea squirt species, eats meat. Its "mouth" is the funnel-shaped structure that traps fish inside. The 20-inch creature was found at a depth of 13,143 feet near southern Tasmania, Australia. It's one of several animals recently discovered in the region by a team Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) and the California Institute of Technology. From National Geographic:
The four-week voyage, which ended on January 17, 2009, found evidence that global warming may be linked to dying coral reefs in the ocean depths, expedition members say."Bizarre" Species Found -- Predatory Squirt, More
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Are those freakin' lights where the eyes should be!?!?!?
Looks like something you could use if the liquor doesn't work.
Looks like the hideous love child of Gypsy and Tom Servo.
Next they need to find a man-eating sea squirt. That will be awesome.
Yet another reason that Urochordates (as discussed by The Oyster's Garter) should win the great invertebrate battle royale!
Sea squirts are actually chordates, which puts them in the same phylum as us. They're not so different from the earliest chordates that evolved at the beginning of multicellular life.
Or at least that's how they are at first. At the end of their mobile larval stage, they anchor to the ocean floor and devour most of their own innards including the central nervous system and become basically just a feeding sac.
Neat-o keen!
Lampy!
It also eats letters and little words.
#4 posted by JoshuaZ , January 26, 2009 2:19 PM
Next they need to find a man-eating sea squirt. That will be awesome.
Perhaps one was found but we don't know because it's a man-eating sea squirt.
think of them as prize tulips.
What the hell's a sea squirt?
@OASISOB1:
Excellent point. Perhaps because it's 2:40 in the morning while I am writing a 15 page paper, but that struck me as being inappropriately hilarious.
Also, I'm pretty sure this thing made a cameo appearance in an episode of Spongebob a few years back.
I first read about this discovery in a German magazine last week.
What makes it even weirder is the German name for that sort of creature, which is Seescheide (literal translation: Sea Vagina).
I leave the ''carnivorous'' jokes to somebody else
Who needs to explore Mars? Clearly, we aren't done looking at our own planet yet.
The original press release, with more videos and much less mis-conversion of units, can be found here