What do you think is "objectively" the weirdest animal or organism? Like the ones you're shocked are even in their family. My guess would be sacculina, it's insane to me how they're more related to crabs or ants than some type of flat worm or flukes. My other picks would be ship worms, tunicates and barnacles in general.
why the fuck is it all underwater
Cliones.
You can eat those things, wonder what they taste like
Glass sponges just don't make sense.
You're telling me the simplest form of multicellular life on earth learned how to make glass and then weave it like thread into a spire?
And generations after generations of symbiotic shrimp live and die inside the structure of the spire
And they might live for 15,000 fucking years?! how the fuck are these things real
Predatory sponges. They look like alien architecture, and are generally just fucking bizarre to think about
You think that's bizarre? How about an amoeba that steals parts from sponges so it can basically function like a sponge? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispaniculosiphon_oceana
This is the fakest organism I have ever seen
>4–5 cm
>unicellular
I know about valeria ventricosa and algae, but I did not know there were several diverse examples of cell the size of lizards. Wonder how many more are swimming around down there
*fakest-looking
>but I did not know there were several diverse examples of cell the size of lizards. Wonder how many more are swimming around down there
Have another, fren. I personally think it's almost certainly the case that pre-Ediacaran there were far more giant, unicellular organisms that roamed the Ocean floor. Due to them likely being unmineralized though(as mineralization is seemingly a means of protecting oneself from animal predation first and foremost) it is unlikely we'll find all too much evidence of this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gromia_sphaerica
Also there's Xenophyophores, larger 'cousins' to Gromia that get significantly larger tests than them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenophyophorea
midcentury animals
Looks like something straight out of Subnautica.
Great thread
Nom nom
crab are everywhere wtf
Invertebrates disgust me. Vertebrates have progressively evolved towards higher levels of consciousness and intelligence but stuff like OP's pic feel closer to bacteria and viruses than animals.
Therapsids are funny, they look a bit like some of the first Pokemon
Didn't they recently name a therapsid bulbasaurus?
Anyone got any journals or literature about porocephalus or armillifer? I just found out about porocephaliasis and it scares the shit out of me.
Don't eat snakes.
Viruses because they are not even alive
anything that’s supposed to live outside and tries to live inside with me other than my pets
spiders, centipedes and moths outside? kinda neat. inside of my domicile? instant fight reaction and slipper ctrl+x
if they’re unlucky the cats find them first and eat them, this one loves eating spiders
What about lizards and frogs?
It has eyes but no brain
How the fuck does it see?
I mean it doesn't have a centralized brain but it has neurons, right? A brain is just a centralized bundle of neurons, more or less. Also hormones can be used in response to the light it detects(think the parietal eye of amphibians and lizards and how it affects their circadian rhythm). Even single-celled organisms detect and respond to light.
You don't get it, the visual information is not being sent to our plane.
Wrong board
Homo sapiens
I hate parasites in general. Imagine evolving just to feed off some other organism's nutrients and becoming so dependent on them you actually die without your host? This insect's females don't even exit their hosts and live only to reproduce
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strepsiptera
>Things are very different for male and female strepsiptera. Males look like you’d expect, with wings and antennae and mandibles and big, beautiful eyes. The females? Not so much. “The female is like a bag of eggs,” said entomologist Jeyaraney Kathirithamby of the University of Oxford. “Just a mere bag of eggs.” This is no exaggeration. “The female has nothing—no eyes, no antennae. It has no mouth parts. It’s nothing.” She spends almost her entire life in the host, so what good would things like limbs do? Accordingly, she’s evolved into what is essentially just an oval of flesh.
>Importantly, though, the one thing she does have are naughty bits: the oviduct.
Damn.
>In all strepsipterans the male mates by rupturing the female's cuticle (in the case of Stylopida, this is in a deep narrow fissure of the cephalothorax near the birth canal). Sperm passes through the opening directly into the body in a process called traumatic insemination, which has independently evolved in some other insects like bed bugs.
>Strepsiptera eggs hatch inside the female, and the planidium larvae can move around freely within the female's haemocoel; this behavior is unique to these insects. The offspring consume their mother from the inside in a process known as hemocelous viviparity.
This is truly fucking strange. I am both fascinated and appalled at how specialized parasite behavior gets.
This reminds me of those anglerfish where the males fuse with the females and basically function like sperm supplying organs
this degree of sexual dimorphism has always freaked me the fuck out man. I understand that evolution's intent is to advance onto the best possible system under which life can continue to propogate but this shit just unsettles me.
The Northern Stargazer
Maybe I'm a basic bitch but sponges are pretty strange.
Literally the oldest known multicellular life on earth
Very, very wrong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francevillian_biota
*still alive
Come on man, you can't do this to them. They were probably really cool and had their potential snuffed out before it could be fully realized.
>dirt nipples
I think it'd be more like scum nipples. I'm pretty sure the environment they lived in was dominated by bacterial mats.
so we’re decolonizing 2bya eukaryotes now? or are the austrians just trolling the french?
Not quite the oldest but they're up there. Sponges are one of the OGs of this multi-cellular game and it's everything else that's objectively weird when you look at life on Earth from a chronological perspective, including us.
Dang, Spongebob is based and normal and we are all weirdo Patricks.
the fact that ancient romans and greeks just saw these things and went
>ahh yes, this will be a perfect tool to wipe the shit from my ass with
will always be hilarious to me. you get one shot at life and you're born a sponge which higher beings use to clean their shit smeared anuses with.
Most arthropods bother me only because of how they're mouths typically look, it's strange compared to how us vertebrates use them
First time i saw it i thought it wasn't real
i fucking love colugos m8. SEA has so many cool mammals. its a shame they all live in such hellish jungle habitats though. you cant really appreciate them until they're caged up, very sad. you might also like cuscus(es?). they're marsupial lemurs analogues but they also look like rat-cat hybrids.
They have the same dick-shaped nose like Proboscis monkeys
Humans. Weirdest thing on this planet for sure. Most animals don't even know what to make of a human.
Bedbugs.
Demonic little things.
>insects
>trauma
Doubt
X Truth
It stabfucks an open wound through the female's exoskeleton
She was asking for it
Retard
spray them with rubbing alcohol, kills them in 30 seconds
Stop using the word objectively wrong you stupid fucking gay
This fish that has weird light sensitive organs instead of eyes
That's kinda cool.
theres a few lizards with similar traits
Yeah, most lizards(and other reptiles and amphibians I think) Have a 3rd 'eye', more like eyespots. Pretty freaky since they are vertebrates. .
>Have instructions for perfectly functional eyes in your genome
>decide to develop satellite dishes with lower resolution than a game of snake on a Nokia from 1999
>sacculina
>When a female Sacculina is implanted in a male crab, it interferes with the crab's hormonal balance. This sterilizes it and changes the bodily layout of the crab to resemble that of a female crab by widening and flattening its abdomen, among other things.
>The female Sacculina then forces the crab's body to release hormones, causing it to act like a female crab, even to the point of performing female mating dances.
>If the parasite is removed from the host, female crabs will normally regenerate new ovarian tissue, while males usually develop complete or partial ovaries instead of testes.
B-bros?
Whoever desigbed this creature is extremely based.
have a nice day now
so as a downside, you get sex-changed and force-impregged, but afterwards you're left a fully functioning female (usually)?
i read about armored scale insects being the only obligate chimeras in existence
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC368156/
Insects are pretty god damn weird
Every other animal
>egg gets fertilized
>cells becomes tiny version of animal
>Tiny animal becomes big animal
Insects
>Be egg
>turn in to weird worm thing
>chill out for a bit
>return to egg
>completely dissolve yourself in to goop
>become something completely different in every aspect.
their lives are too short for simple growing, they need a fast and extreme way to grow up
Some insects live longer than a lot of small mammals though
True, world smallest shrew and mammal(I think) lives like a year or so: some queen ants and termites live like a decade and a half.
Wait till you see what crustaceans and jellyfish go through
I'm listening.
Jellyfish reproduction has an asexual and sexual stage. It starts with the medusae fertilizing an egg with sperm like most animals, then this originates a larva, that after a while will find a place to settle and develop into a polyp that looks sort of like an anemone. After a while (they can stay in this stage for years) the polyp will split into several medusae and the cycle will start anew.
Also unlike most flying animals, their wings are not derived from limbs
Not sure exactly how they developed them, i think there is more than one theory
feather starfish and barnacles are weird as hell, oh, and basket stars
This one.
good pick, I hardly ever come across people who discuss these things. its a shame that mexico is such a shithole becuase their native fauna are, or atleast were, truly incredible. RIP vaquitas and those sweet ass bears that once lived in northern mexico
Extremophiles in general. Life finds a way no matter the environment and incidentally it's also gotten me to believe that extraterrestrial life is possible.
My favorite is deinococcus radiodurans, literally the most radiation-resistant organism ever discovered.
It isn’t just resistant to ionising radiation, it can use it for energy as well
possible but unlikely they'll ever be discovered, at least alive
extremophiles existing at all makes me certain that there must be life on europa. im sure it will just be extraterrestial greenland sharks or some shit but I know theyre there dammit.
My dad was on the team that accidentally discovered life around deep sea vents. They'd found traces of life on exploration equipment before but figured it was just contamination from shallower depths.
It was in the early hours of the morning when they realised that something was alive down there, spent until dawn pacing in circles (they were on a rig so hotbunking + don't wake up the boss unless it's an emergency) and collating all their data to be sent off for further analysis.
They were all told that it's categorically scientifically impossible for life to exist in such conditions, so as soon as they realised it was entirely possible they were fretting about what else they don't know. Oil rigs really aren't places where "maybe" is an acceptable answer.
>scientifically impossible for life to exist in such conditions
when will they learn
Nobody tell him.
Blanking on the name but there's a barnacle-like animal that once was a fully mobile species resembling a shrimp that evolved over millions of years to be fully sedentary. If you chop the barnacle-like creature in half you can see the atrophied legs, head, torso, etc of a shrimp half melted and surrounded by mollusk-like meat.
That ring a bell to anyone?
Isn't that just barnacles in general?
imagine the equivalent happening to a human
Cronenberg wouldn't be able to capture the horror
>Comparison between Anelasma squalicola (left) and a more traditional filter feeding barnacle, Lepas sp (right).
>Note the large peduncle and branching “roots” present on Anelasma.
Parasitic barnacle. Pretty creepy fuckers.
https://sharkdevocean.wordpress.com/2015/10/23/shark-eating-barnacles/
It really does look like a half-melted shrimp. That's pretty cool.
Thread's already going there but humans, humans are pretty weird. Some neotenic lanky chimp baby, and it's literally everywhere. Eating everything, doing all sorts of things outside of it's niche.
Fucking things creep me out.
Any of the weird round unicellular organisms as big as an eyeball or bigger. Like valonia ventricosa.
Why do they exist and why do they give me a strange urge to slurp some cytoplasm with a straw?
>mammal without mammaries that just sweats milk
>lays eggs instead of giving live birth
>has a duck bill for a mouth but the bill is LEATHERY
>males have venomous spurs that while not deadly are almost overkill with being excruciatingly painful
>has the tail of a beaver, body of a chonky cat, fur of a river otter, and eyes of a fucking RABBIT of all things
i dont give a flying fuck if this is the vanilla choice these fuckers are STILL something that feel like evolution pulled a slot machine with
>also mesotherms with variable body temperature
without mammaries that just sweats milk
>>lays eggs instead of giving live birth
That's probably how all mammals started and it just didn't evolve further.
>>has a duck bill for a mouth but the bill is LEATHERY
So just big lips.
have venomous spurs that while not deadly are almost overkill with being excruciatingly painful
That's unique among mammals, sure.
>>has the tail of a beaver, body of a chonky cat, fur of a river otter, and eyes of a fucking RABBIT of all things
Convergent evolution. All its parts are 100% platypus parts
>>>lays eggs instead of giving live birth
>That's probably how all mammals started and it just didn't evolve further.
Well yeah, mammal wombs just goes through the whole "egg" process but skips the calcium shell.
I never really got why people put so much stock in the difference. They're almost entirely similar in their development stage and the only difference is that egglayers cut their connection with their babe early.
well the shock just comes from the looks and functions of the animal really. how many other mammals look as wild as a platypus? for that matter how many other mammals have beaks or venom? they're fascinating oddities
Honestly after looking into it, it seems that venomous mammals are not super rare. You have bats, shrews, slow lorises, and moles that all have venom. Skunks, while not poisonous/venomous, have chemical defense.
while true, I want you to factor in the reality that the majority of humanity lives in urban population centers. there they are mainly exposed to the same dozen or so animal species you would expect. domestic dogs and cats, rats, raccoons, roaches, etc. if you dont live in the country side or near a nature reserve, you've probably never seen a bat or even a cow in person. some of these animals (skunks, moles, voles, etc) are hard enough to spot in the wild anyways due to their solitary nature and the way they live to begin with. So if your only frame of reference for animals have been limited to things youve seen in zoos or the animals in your suburb, something like a platypus or a sea urchin seems pretty eild by comparison.
I understand, I mean there was a time where egglaying mammals baffled me, and I live in a rural ish Georgia(USA) area.
no kidding, im from around that area too. its crazy some of the shit that used to live in the deep south. im still a little upset that ae used to have bears and cougars as far south as the everglades and then people just picked them off until they either disappeared or nearly went extinct. the south has alot of fun fauna man. even the invassive shit down here is nuts.
>if you dont live in the country side or near a nature reserve, you've probably never seen a bat
I live in the 4th largest city in the USA and I see bats every evening, you're retarded.
Also
>doesn't have a stomach
echidnas are almost odder for the simple sake of being derived terrestrial platypuses.
>has the gate of a reptile
>anteater like proboscis
>claws like a wombat
>looks and functions like a hedgehog
evolution can be really entertaining sometimes. semirelated, but generally speaking I think marsupials are my favorite mammal family because of how bizarre and out of place they look compared to their placental counterparts. possums and raccoons are functionally the same creature but possums look like permian period stem-mammals from a billion years ago. then you just end up with some odd members of the family like fuckin tree kangaroos or bilbies that just look like god tried drawing kangaroos or wallabys from memory while drunk.
>males have venomous spurs that while not deadly are almost overkill with being excruciatingly painful
Only for mansized creatures and up, it can kill dogs and probably children. Also, slow lorises are a venous primate, so kinda weird as well.
it makes me sad that slow lorises are so heavily targeted by the pet trade. they're fascinating and adorable little creatures that deserve to be left alone. for as cute as they are im always a bit sad whenever I see people keeping them as pets.
The idea of poisonous/venomous mammals still strikes me the wrong way. Like, it just feels wrong. Birds and mammals have no bussiness having toxic pecks/bites. Then again I also don't think octopuses should be allowed to be venomous but here we are.
ENTER
They can do that? Fuck me
That was the only way they could survive after the Mesozoic
ayooo, dem plantz be walkin sheeesh
they're just adapted to move through a dense medium
Okay when it started "walking" like a spider, I freaked out.
crinoid are so weird, I love them
ahhh that abhorrent post
Bigfin Squid never cease to freak me the fuck out. Terrifying and alien things deep in the ocean with incredibly long tentacles
Makes you wonder how many of the sailor stories were actually true...
It's rare to see giant squid on the surface. Usually just when they are dead or dying. I can imagine sailors spotted one every now and then, or heard storys from someone else who had spotted one. Maybe trying to cling to the ship. And the guys had no idea such a species existed. And of course, sometimes ships were lost at sea, sunk somewhere never to be seen or heard from again. So come up with tales of a monster that could pull ships under
Also Stygiomedusa Gigantea, the Giant Phantom Jellyfish. The mantle can have a diameter of 1.4m, length including tentacles up to 6m.
This guy looks meaty
It's just a floating curtain, mate
This is what happens when you accidentally flush the whole bog roll down the shitter by accident
Garloids. one of my buddies is "raising" one, if you can consider a plastic enclosure and tap water to be suitible living conditions
Like with geoducks, I initially these are a hoax. But nope, nature is just retarded.
That’s just an adult garloid mimicking a geoduck
>Tapwater
Depends where you live, some states have clean tapwater.
But in a lot of countries, ~~*they*~~ put products that are toxic to those poor fuckers.
in anglo countries they put fluorine in the tap water
Eels.
>nobody knows how or where they reproduce
>the pout (baby forms) were once considered their own species
>they can use electricity to attack things
Basically Pokemon IRL
Wait, what kinds of eels can use electricity besides the electric eels(which aren't true eels, they're more closely related to catfish)?
Sargasso sea is where the baby american eels live, other Anguilla species must have similar places in their repsective countries of origin.
We know where the babies live but we have never found eel eggs as far as I know.
>nobody knows how or where they reproduce
Wait, hold on. Really?
>Wait, hold on. Really?
No. That's just a specific folk myth about one species of eel (out of 800 species of eel).
As the poster above said, those particular eels breed in the Sargasso Sea. No mystery there.
Also, eels are just fish. Literally just fish. Amazing fish, a lot of them, but still just fish.
Yes really. The European eel. That is found in rivers in Europe.
Only recently it was proven that they reproduce in the sargasso sea.
So until a few years ago we assumed they reproduced there but didn't know for sure
Similar with other freshwater eels
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_longfin_eel#Life_cycle
I hate you.
>they have babies in sargasso sea and devolp reproductive organs on the way their
>many larval stages have been considered different species at one point
>The fishess that use electricity are not eels, just very large knifefish or Gymnotids.
Only fish that can produce own electricity are Gymnotidae and Mormyridae. Neither are eels. Both super cool groups of fish tho.
I love crinoids, sucks we cant keep them in captivity
The one I dont get are brook lampreys, Your telling me those fucks dont eat as adults??? and they just look like lancets for 17 years??? How come I never see the babies even when I sift thorugh mud but I always see adults everywhere. I dont trust the scientists who reaserch them. Like how do they not have a digestive tract???
>t. scientist
>Like how do they not have a digestive tract???
Do they have a trophosome instead? I mean they certainly would have their coelom, right?
well apparently they say they have a full digestive tract as ammocoets (or however you spell it). But as they develop intod adults it gets consumed.
And their mouths are only used for respiration and suction.
But the issue with that is as they supposedly live for 6 months without eating. While putting on a considerable amount of size and reproducing. So they have to get that energy from somewhere.
Like I said. Dont trust the scientists. Also lampreys and hagfish fuck up how we classify fish so I hate them even more
I wasn't aware of the time frames involved but I looked into it more. They eat detritus primarily as juveniles from what I saw and if that's true then they certainly have symbiotic bacteria. Trophosomes are primarily used by animals that have evolved a whole dependence on their symbiotic bacteria to get their energy needs and survive(Think tube worms in the deep sea in cold seeps and hydrothermal vents). Seeing as these lampreys are more sessile with their mouths only developing teeth once they're adults(and for the purpose of grasping) then I think it might be possible that they have something like a proto-trophosome. They might still be fermenting detritus inside of them and imparting various chemicals like hydrogen sulfide from the water and concentrating it into their remaining digestive tract for energy from their symbiotic gut fauna.
uhhhh a lot of animals eat detritus that dont have crazy gut bacteria. Its a relitivley nutrient rich food item thats already broken down for you. I dont personally know of any fish that ferment their food or have symbiotic bacteria. I also personally beleive that lampreys are closer to lancets than actaul fish. But im not well versed on early fish taxonomy
I think having a trophosome would probably be figured out. As well as salmon exhibit the same phenomenon where they gain size while not eating. Idk. I just thing that the people who research brook lampreys are missing something important.
>uhhhh a lot of animals eat detritus that dont have crazy gut bacteria.
I don't mean anything crazy but they do have a symbiotic relationship. For example termites and land-dwelling isopods eat rotting wood and rely on the gut fauna that they have(and what's in the wood breaking it down) to do the majority of the digestion for them. Hydrogen sulfide fixating bacteria symbionts aren't something seemingly too difficult to evolve as many semi-sessile and sessile organisms have developed relationships with them. For example shipworms( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipworm ) and another trophosome haver the Paracatenula flatworms( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracatenula ). There are other chemotrophs that could potentially be used besides sulfur oxidizing ones, like nitrogen oxidizing(nitrifying) bacteria(which might make more sense as the very ammonia that the lampreys would produce from breaking down their fat and muscle tissue would produce ammonia which can then sustain those bacteria, plus anything gotten from the water that passes them by). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrifying_bacteria
Im just an ichthyologist my man. I aint ever heard of no fishes that got that bacteria. So i don't know it. Ill send ya some lampreys to cut open if ya want.
I'd be up for it, but if you ever get ahold of some adult brook lampreys and want to experiment then you could measure their growth in differing water parameters. See if there's a positive correlation between hydrogen sulfide/ammonia levels and their body mass gain. If you have them in an enclosed body of water too then you could see the rate at which ammonia entering the water transforms into nitrate with or without them to see if they're affecting it at all.
>I aint ever heard of no fishes that got that bacteria.
Wasn't there some anglerfish with a blind lightless lure, no teeth, and weird bacterial glands in its mouth? I figured that was what it was doing. Rhynchactis is the genus it seems.
It sucks that there were once ceiling crinoids that hung upside down from driftwood like barnacles, but we lost them to Katie. Damn you, meteors!
>And their mouths are only used for respiration and suction.
Apparently they also grip stones them with them and build nests
Quite unusual for a fish
>How come I never see the babies
I catch them occasionally when dragging a hand seine around.
lancelets
Lancelets are cool, I want them as pets.
>be 250mm lancelet
>800mm gigalance steals my gf
>mfw
Hell yes it's sacculina. I can barely believe a mass of tentacles is an actual animal instead of a fungus, and one that is an arthropod to boot (essentially, you already stated it literally perfectly with the comparison). Before I knew about sacculina I considered barnacles a mockery of the bilateral animal form, but sacculina put it into stark perspective -- at least barnacles have something that can be identified as a "mouth" and even an "outside", like a literal air-facing exterior.
Tunicates is another good pick. They are chordates. What in the fuck?
fungi is fucking wierd and unnerving, like they grow super fast, some of them shoot spores in the air, they bave some wierd ass communication shit if i recall correctly, and they're not even plants, LIKE WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU
I can't fathom how communal organisms like the Portuguese man o' war evolved
I was just watching a video on how some species of mushroom have spiked tendrils on their hyphae that they use to spear and eat nematodes
>sacculina
Imagine if there were some equivalent parasite for humans? Like, it latches on to your dick and floods your system with female hormones until you turn into an over-sexed bimbo who lives only to copulate and spread the parasite? Wouldn't that be wild? Ha ha.
Imagine.
A parasite like that does exist, it's just memetic
What if the internet is just a digital, incorporeal equivalent of sacculina
Ted wanted to destroy it and he almost cut his dick off first
I'm not afraid of the ocean or sea creatures generally but these elicit fear in me.
wtf is it?
Pyrosome I think
Neo-penis
Holy shit that's big. They seem pretty harmless though.
Considering that it's made of thousands of tiny seperate creatures I wouldn't touch it out of fear it'd start crawling up my ass.
>be on fishing boat
>fall into the ocean
>see moving tube
>get sorrounded
What would you do?
Octopuses. Fucking crash-landed regressed/de-evolved Ayy Lmao looking freaks.
parasitic worms
whatever this is
That's a comb jelly(ctenophore), you can tell by that rainbowy shimmering along those lines. Those are from its cilia refracting light. The poor one in your video literally got eviscerated by the current.
>The poor one in your video literally got eviscerated by the current
I hate when discussion of that vid devolves into some anon thinking it's a new species of squid that shot out ink to escape.
It's just a poor dude that got yeeted by the water flow.
Most discussion of that video i've seen somehow ends up on people coming to the conclusion that the thing is either sapient or an alien for some reason
This. Posting that webm on Wauf is absolutely hysterical.
its funny seeing them trying to find meaning in the cilia movement thats just reflecting light
is there any explanation for the shape shifting that took place?
i dont find the light show nearly as strange as the shape shifting.
They're basically like a gelatinous bag with some lobes. It was probably in some weird feeding posture before and then the current itself either startled it to look more like the webm I posted before or just pushed it into its original shape. Comb jellies also come in a variety of forms but iirc the most common form is basically a ball with two tendrils that go off in either direction. They don't have nematocysts(stinging cells) and instead the tentacles are just sticky. They'll remain idle in the water column and then retract their tentacles back in order to consume whatever was stuck to them.
I remember seeing a swarm of these guys at the beach once, but at the time I thought they were just jellyfish
They usually do get called jellyfish and they're not all non-venomous either. Beroids, like the one in that post you replied to, have something akin to "teeth" and a digestive "saliva" that they use to help kill and digest their prey. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beroidae
>"The three-toothed tip of the macrocilia is stiff enough for it to rip the outer wall of larger prey such as other ctenophores; at the same time, proteolytic enzymes penetrate into the resulting wounds, rapidly incapacitating the victim.[4][5]"
It's completely harmless to us at least but still cool since ctenophores and cnidarians are some of the earliest branches of the animal family tree.
Can you feel it if they "bite" you? Does it hurt?
Never been bit by one but your skin should be more than thick enough to be fine. Mucus membranes like your gums, eyes, etc. would be less safe though.
Whats happening here?
If we are speaking about mammals is there anything weirder than whales being nested within artiodactyls? Manatees, elephants and hyraxes being the closest relatives of each others comes to mind but aside from that I'm not sure.
Maybe not exactly "objectively wierdest", but it always fascinated me that the second closest thing nature has to human civilization are ants. Some of these guys invented/discovered agriculture and cities hundreds of millions of years before humans came into picture.
Rather an exaggeration. Ants appeared around a hundred million years ago. Agriculture didn't appear until the eocene, 50 mio years ago.
Also termites did all of it earlier.
triggers my autism
ant "agriculture" is an evolved symbiotic relationships
they don't have "cities", they have nests where everyone is related to each other (and female)
>ant "agriculture" is an evolved symbiotic relationships
What do you think wheat or rice is? Most of the crops we grow can't survive in that form in nature and quickly evolve to being less edible. Citrus plants quickly become overly bitter and sour, pigs quickly become more like boars, dogs more like wolves, etc.. We're also more evolved to care for animals and we develop oxytocin based relationships with them.
>What do you think wheat or rice is?
Do you see human babies spontaneously planting rice fields without being taught anything? Domestic crops are technology we created very recently. We never evolved to plant crops.
>We're also more evolved to care for animals
Than what?
How could you experimentally show that humans have evolved to like dogs?
It’s not that we evolved to like dogs. Dogs evolved to be liked by empathetic people who also like each other, and they stayed because having dogs increases evolutionary fitness.
A dog is a tame wolf that does not attack people.
>It’s not that we evolved to like dogs.
Then it's not a "symbiotic relationship".
If there are actually academics who use that term to describe domestication I'd be curious to see it.
Yeah its commensalism I never said it was anything
It’s becoming a symbiotic relationship because so many humans are now basically blind and if society collapses they will actually need dogs to find food or see shit approaching, and so many dogs are retarded they will need humans to survive at all.
*mutualism
It’s late
Oh wait isn’t mutualism a form of symbiosis
Lol!
Some people say pets are parasites. But this is because they don’t understand what the pet actually does or how (in fact they are antisocial and low empathy and never will). The pet replaces them. The obligatory friend who is just a friend and does very little, but highly social people need that no strings attached relationship to stay sane and evolving to lack the need for one at all would make them worse in other ways. Pets are a symbiote that allows us to remain highly social and replace potentially dangerous and resource intensive non-productive humans with something exponentially safer and cheaper. Objectively less unneeded human contact lessens your risk of being killed or stolen from. All of your human friends should be productive enough to make up for that risk, but that creates stressful obligations and friendships that can never be relied on. The useless friend is the best one to confide in and rely on just to fulfill your instincts.
They are an inevitable and essential part of an efficient high trust society but they must be that. Friends, fwbs. Not children. Or they stop being a symbiote. It’s like your gut flora moving to your body cavity - nope!
>fwbs
I though this thread was dead
How the fuck did we get here?
>"Uhhm, actually, sweaty, it's not symbiotic unless it's an innately developed trait that babies have. Also give me some sources for humans liking dogs or that humans care for animals more than other animals."
Brainlet.
You misinterpreted both claims. The first wasn't about babies in particular, just innate behavior. The second was about innate behavior too, not denying that people have pets.
I'm surprised by how many people are using "symbiosis" in your sense. Looks like you were right about terminology. But it seems sloppy to me to use the term when the evolutionary relationship is one-sided.
I'm curious, do you also think that humans are "eusocial"?
It’s far from one sided and humans are only eusocial if we are both multicultural and extremely, extremely racist
>We never evolved to plant crops.
Uhhh but we did, stupid. Ahhh that old hominid exceptionalism. Muh culture.
>ant "agriculture" is an evolved symbiotic relationships
moron that's exactly what agriculture is. Hell, most agricultural life has evolved so far from their wild counterparts they would't survive a week in the wild.
that's because eusociality is the highest step in social evolution. we just have yet to reach it
>that's because eusociality is the highest step in social evolution. we just have yet to reach it
Debatable. While humans have only very limited biological reproductive specialisation (menopause), our behaviour is highly eusocial.
Laying down your life to the benefit of others in your community is a fundamentally eusocial behaviour. The poppy fields of flanders are only possible if your species, or society, values supporting the reproductive success of the collective over the reproductive success of the individual. Human willingness to go to war and die for the benefit of the collective is a fundamentally eusocial behaviour.
And the reason eusocial species are as successful as they are isn't simply their mode of reproduction. It's the behavioural changes this mode of reproduction enables. If these same behavioural changes are possible without changing the mode of reproduction, the impact on the ecosystem is still the same.
And that's before we get into humans not having a high degree of biologically sourced reproductive specialisation, but very much having a high degree of social reproductive specialisation. Wealth used to be an important determinant in whether a human could reproduce or not. A large percentage of humans still worked for their respective polities, but never got to breed, simply by way of social enforcement. Crucially, their work still benefitted the polity they lived in, which cannot be said for a jaguar that dies alone and without having fathered cubs. Individuals without reproductive success still added to the reproductive success of the collective.
THAT is the fundamentally difference between eusociality and not-eusociality.
And interestingly enough, there are species of wasps that function the same. Each worker CAN lay eggs from which new wasps would hatch, but social enforcement of dominance hierarchies means that only the queen (or sometimes several queens) actually does so.
Humans are on that level. Primitively eusocial.
I've seen a lot of weird shit posted here but I still can't wrap my head around siphonophores.
Dendrogasters? Sure.
Prototaxites? Why not.
Siphonophores? Nope, can't do it.
>Dendrogasters
Oh shit that's their name? I remember seeing this picture a while back but I couldn't remember the name so I made this thread starting with sacculina, I feel like this is even stranger and there seems to be less information on them, the marinespecies website only has 35 species in the genus. Siphonophores are beautiful in an alien sort of way.
You know how mitochondria are basically their own animal? That’s every part of a siphonophores body, but their cells are more independent.
Elaborate?
I see. I think I actually get it now.
>mitochondria
The mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell, how can their be their own cell? What do they do with their energy?
There is nothing weird about this. It is extremely straight-forward to imagine them coming into being. I look at these creatures and say "Yes."
Biblically accurate jellyfish
Is this AI generated?
No, generated by Ernst Häckel.
· (Racial Slur) - 1,357
Made me chuckle. God bless you.
The man truly loved his cat. What a nice fellow.
Yes, it sure was a cute, furry, 4 legged NIGGE...
Someone explain to me like a retard why siphonophores are made up of individual organisms and how that's different from other animals with a number of organs. It's not like the individual parts of a man-o-war could survive by themselves and all the different organisms grow from the same single egg, how is that so different from a human embryo ultimately spawning all the different organs?
The individual parts of a man-o-war each have their own genetic code
>barnacle-like
Barnacles
IIRC tunicates are similar but less grotesque
>their own genetic code
But they still all come from a single egg right? Fucking weird man.
man-o-wars genuinely unsettle me. there's something undescribably hellish and kind of sad about being a living mass of multiple entities with the capacity to sting the shit out of schools of fish all at once. it would be like fusing together every Wauf user into one being and designing that new being's body into a metal gear made of living flesh
You're on Wauf, so you probably already know this, but 90% of the cells in your body are symbiotic bacteria and archaea, and your proper cells contain a liquid network of transiently fusing and differentiating mitochondria that has its own genome because it originated as other cells that your cells engulfed
So don't judge
siphonophores are like if you counted a meieval lord's fiefs as an organism. that means cows, chickens, dogs, etc are included.
We develop with all the organs pre-set and then get bigger. Siphonophores generate new zooids over and over - and each zooid, UNLIKE an organ, is its own little thing that exists separately and is capable of fugging and making another zooid. Some of them propel the siphonophore, others catch food, others digest, but they all have a unique genetic code. It'd be like if your hand fucked your other hand to generate a third hand independent of what you wanted it to do, and then remove your brain from the equation, and apply that to every function of your body - and it's all connected to a common feeding tube for shared nutrients.
Thats shounds cool as fuck
But I dont get how are they are of "bigger" organism rather than just clump of beings working together
Cos at the end of the day they perform different functions as a collective than they do individually
Coral for example has different polyps. They can all live independently, but together they have a symbiotic relationship that enables very different functions
We call them species because all the different kinds of polyps will only form these relationships with a set kind of similar polyps
Imagine if dogs (the zooids, also called polyps) can merge together and contribute their specialisations towards a superdog (the siphonophore). You got collies in their providing herding instincts, pitbulls for killing, chihuahuas for trembling and being yappy little cunts. They can each live individually however together they've made something that can do everything and share its resources
However this will only happen with different dog breeds. You can't chuck a cat into the superdog; it'll be rejected by the superdog because it's not a dog
The superdog is then a different organism to the dog, the dogs are different to a cat, and a superdog is a different organism to a supercat.
Or you could imagine that they've instinctively built biological cities with each professional role filled by the individual organism's natural physical specialisation. Either way that's basically how it works
Lets say we have four superdogs composed of three dogs each one
>collie colllie pitbull
>collie colllie pitbull
>collie colllie pitbull
>chihuahua chihuahua chihuahua
Will the four of them be different superdog species?
What would happen if (collie colllie pitbull) exchange dogs and they result in
(collie pitbull pitbull) and (collie colllie collie)?
Imagine if all your organs could fuck off if they got bored, and you could just mix and match organs with another person
Don't have to worry about organ rejection because they're not "keyed" for your specific body. Their have their own unique DNA, immune system, etc that coexists with yours. Everything is handled locally by the organ itself and if it dies it gets replaced by another.
That's basically the principle.
aren't they just poorly defined jellyfish?
Which diverged first, sponges or comb jellies?
Bats are very strange creatures. They’re more related to primates than they are rodents or squirrels. Strange hand like bone structure. Only mammals with the ability to fly (not just glide). Some bats are big and cute, others are small and nightmarish.
>They’re more related to primates than they are rodents or squirrels.
Wrong, it's primates that are related to rodents, bats are related to carnivorans and ungulates. That probably makes them weirder.
>bats related to ungulates
The actual fuck
It's not like bats arose from a ungulate ancestor or viceversa, their last common ancestor was was some shrew looking thing and both branches are highly derived.
I agree, flying mammals is just a weird concept for me some reason.
To me Cetaceans are weirder
You have water mammals who are bigger than any fish
Also Dolphins, who have primate level intelligence but were cucked out of tools because they have fins
>Also Dolphins, who have primate level intelligence but were cucked out of tools
It's time to genetically engineer dolphins to have hands and arms instead of pectoral fins. They can have the oceans while we get the land.
Chinese knockoff mermaid.
The Chinese would love them. They could be pressed into underwater sweatshops. China's already been getting more underwater real estate with all of those artificial islands increasing their EEZ.
Then how are they going to swim, dummy
They've still got their tail fin, of course. Sirens don't seem to have any issue with this setup.
Let's not go down that rabbit hole
I feel like the book would've been okay if the art wasn't so abhorrently disgusting. All Tomorrows worked fine, after all.
I think it was more so what the humans turned into in the latter that made it better, as All Tomorrows had creatures that look gross.
I actually really like the art because of how bizarre it looks
My favorite creatures were definitely the hivers
I see no issue here.
They potentially could, if all of the niches opened up. They already breath air so it'd just be about supporting themselves on land and moving around. I remember there was a spec evo thing before that had envisioned cetaceans returning to land being tripodal(their tailfin being the hind leg and their pectoral fins becoming their front limbs).
Wheres is this from?
Man After Man: An Anthropology of the Future
i wonder if it could be possible for them to come back on land one day...
I think they have vestigial leg bones or something?
Dolphins with hands would immediately become the slave race of Orcas.
We should give Orcas hands too then. Gotta make their job easier.
Just give them collars with robot arms
They are right up with bats, like noses on top of their heads and brushes in the mouths of some whales that filterfeed on prey that is very small.
They might not have hands to grab stuff but they have prehensile dicks... well, half of them do
I don’t think barnacles are weird. They are just crabs that can’t walk and live off filter feeding. Wish they could be kept in aquariums, but they starve to death, always.
>they starve to death, always.
nah, I've seen them survive on live rock for years. We keep lots of filter feeders including sponges, corals, tube worms, some scallops and anemones
I think the bigger problem is most large barnacles are cold water species and almost nobody keeps cold water with plankton and etc.
>We keep lots of filter feeders including sponges, corals, tube worms, some scallops and anemones
That sounds awesome, I have had making a cool saltwater tank on my bucket list for a while, I especially like scallops, how is taking care of those? What other animals do you have? Do you have any cool crabs or seastars?
Snails
You seriously think this is more close to flatworms?
Dude please don't tell me you're that stupid.
fucking idiot lmao
The sacculina is the fleshy blob attached to the crab, not the crab itself
My ancestor 🙂
>I bet if I go on land the garden gnomes will get btfo’d one day
>fuck it lets gooo
Anon, that's also the ancestor of garden gnomes.
Hey that's the asshole that decided to climb out of the water and now I have to work and pay taxes
Why'd he do it lads?
This is a catfish, from the Glanapteryginae family.
Myxoxoans.
Lots of land animals have returned to the water.
Many have lost their limbs, teeth, and other organs which took a long time to evolve.
Some have moved from endothermy back to ectothermy.
As far as I'm aware, these little freaks are the only ones who have given up on being multicellular and returned to a protozoan style existence.
>reject modernity
>return to blob
Unlce Ted was right about everything......VGH!!!
Some species parasitize shrews and frogs
So technically the only Cnidarians on land
Henneguya zschokkei
Looks like an gray alien mixed with a sperm cell, I always forget cnidarians include anemones and coral and not just jelly fish
This pyura tunicate is crazy, it freaks me out how tunicates are vertebrates.
>it freaks me out how tunicates are vertebrates.
Chordates, not vertebrates, but yeah. It's fucking unbelievable that some cnidarian-like blob-thing is closer to us than squid, which have eyes, brains, hearts, skeletons, etc.
My candidate is transmissible cancers. They are essentially animals (including humans) which have made an evolutionary leap into a contagious disease in one 'generation'. Like, there's your dog, and its ancestors were dogs. Then there's a tumour growing on your dog's dick, and the tumour's ancestors were also dogs.
>cancer is a life form
i never thought about that thats fucking freaky
>cancer is a life form
More like
>a contagious human cancer is the same species as you
>>a contagious human cancer is the same species as you
But it's not.
It's a new species that split off humans.
not sure.
Isnt it a subspecies from the host being?
Wouldnt every cell division from within cross transmission be another subespecies?
Wouldnt being a circular transmission kill every possibility to retrieve patient cero identity?
Gee I sure hope I won't evolve into a parasitic lifeform
Speak for yourself.
>photos taken moments before disaster
>Gee I sure hope I won't evolve into a parasitic lifeform
If you're a leftist it's already too late.
fuck off to 4chan fag
Don't worry, men can't become women
The future is HeLa.
of course it had to be a niggress
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks
>Chordates, not vertebrates
Oh ok, I think I got confused with all them having a notochord as all them having a spinal column
Well, it superficially seems close to flatworms. It's a parasitic white blobish creature. If I showed you the picture of the sacculina next to a crab or this liver fluke which one would you assume it's closer too? I understand It looks more traditionally arthropod in its larval stages.
That kind of stuff is interesting (and scary) as fuck.
I remember reading about a case where a guy got tapeworms or some other parasitic worm in him, but his immune system was so weak that the worm larvae somehow managed to mutate into tumors instead of growing like a normal tapeworm would, or something along those lines
damn that's actually pretty cool
The tapeworm had cancer and because he had no immune system, he got his tapeworm's cancer.
>This pyura tunicate is crazy, it freaks me out how tunicates are vertebrates.
They aren't really tho, minor technicalities don't count.
is that ayy sperm?
that's MY sperm, my bad, I can't help myself when I get horny
omw, have the lube ready
>doesn't breathe or use oxygen for energy
>still unknown how it produces energy
WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT
>electromagnetism schizo time
>salmon parasite
Maybe it just takes salmon energy raw and that's why it doesn't need mitochondrias
>One theory explaining the highly unsual habit of H. zschokkei and its fellow myxosporeans invokes the cancers of cnidarians. On this explanation, animals such as H. zschokkei were originally cancerous growths in free-swimming jellyfish that escaped their parent organism and thereafter became a separate species parasitizing other animals. Such an origin is referred to as a SCANDAL (Speciated by CANcer Development in AnimaLs).[10]
Ah, the old HeLa/transmissible dog cancer dynamic strikes again. This reminds me how any animal, technically, just depends on its germ line. It sounds trivial, but it becomes more fascinating the more think about it: we ultimately only depend on the genetic code that belongs to the sperm/egg. Meaning if some cosmic ray strikes you gonads, all your descendants will have that change (simplified). If the entire rest of the body receives a trillion cosmic rays, your progeny will not care and not be affected. You -- the person that is you -- literally just sources from ball cells.
As said, it sounds trivial, but also strange.
this. cnidarians are the emanations of the divine. life shot past primordial unicellate building blocks into degenerate chordate status worshippers-reflections of the blind god / serpent bearing samael / IAO dabaoth / rotten kundalini at their core / chord
cnidarian = kadmon aryan = primordial most high untouched by death
no accident that cnidarians evolved biological immortality no accident they are infinitely flexible in terms of evolution and can use hundreds of widely disparate life strategies, this is a metaphysical truth reflected in their flesh
no accident they dont need mitochondria to live, mito = DA MATE = demeter = rhea = treacherous titaness = ashera = EVE, chondria = CHRONOS = kronos = saturn = satan = demiurgic thoughtform ia = IAO = yahweh sabaoth = ialdabaoth = demiurgic dreamer but cnidarians are untouched by entropy or the Fall of the world
no accident they have radial symmetry (axis mundi, mandala, seal of solomon the king) while chordates (sons of kronos) have bilateral demiurgic / dualistic / sefirotic false forms, as above so below, the fall reflected in the fallen architecture of the body, flawed temple,
no accident. look up ofanim
>schizo thinks the most holy life is a wiggly plant
Kek
>kadmon aryan
Your brain is terminally rotted by gnomish mysticism, please end yourself
Thx Dr Bronner
HHHHAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA.
I too have read the schizo soap bottle.
Lmao I'm gonna see schizoposting in a whole new light now
Sanest Wauf poster
Dont know wether youre trolling or mental