The siphonophore appears to be a single large organism, but is actually a colony of individual zooids. These zooids function together as a single unit and some of them can’t survive without the others. This video captured a deep sea siphonophore that is also bioluminescent.
Pretty little polychaetes who bury their several-metre-long bodies in the ground and wait until something brushes up against one of their antennae. They then snap their venomous mandibles shut so fast they sometimes scissor their prey right in half
It’s hard to hear your friends when you’re in a crowded room! And right now, many places in the ocean are becoming like that crowded room, as noise pollution – like sounds from ships – makes the ocean environment much louder than it used to be.
That’s a major concern, since many marine animals, like humpback whales, depend on sound for everything from communicating with their mates and offspring to finding food.
Dr. David Wiley, research coordinator at Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, has been studying the impacts of ship noise on foraging humpback whales. A recent study he collaborated on is among the first to show that humpback whale foraging behavior is significantly altered from exposure to ship noise. As the intensity of ship noise increases – from increased shipping, for example – humpback whales decrease the number of bottom-feeding events per dive, perhaps because ship noise interferes with the sounds they produce to coordinate their bottom-feeding behavior.
Amazing, this is a crinoid swimming (edited after comments)
Never seen one of these before? You have, but they normally look like this:
Crinoids are a type of echninoderm (also in that taxa: sea stars, sea urchins, and sea cucumbers). They were super popular in the Paleozoic and aren’t nearly as common anymore.
For at least one part of their life cycle, they’re anchored to the seafloor and we normally see them looking like the image above - but most eventually become free swimming as an adult.
Like the more well-known types of echnioderms, a crinoid is basically a mouth surrounded by feeding arms. It’s actually swimming using the movement of those feeding arms! This is actually a pretty efficient adaptation, since the feeding arms catch small particles of food and move them towards the mouth - it’s most likely they can swim and snag food at the same time.
Moray eels have been bred for the first time at a Zoo in Austria, and the babies are now old enough to show off their very impressive teeth. “Up to now, nobody knew what the larvae look like, what they eat and how they behave“, said the zoo’s director, Dagmar Schratter, who hopes to breed more moray eels now that they’ve finally figured out the right conditions.
