Hey, look! A pile of baked beans!
Or jelly beans?
Marshmallows?
This baffling mound of madness, this ball of balls, is a sea anemone from south Australia and New Zealand.
It spends the day curled up in a ball and only at night does it open up...
And set its tentacles to work catching food.
Now it looks like a perfectly ordinary sea anemone. At least from the top...
But look at it from the side and you can see all those bulging blobs all over its 15 cm (6 in) column.
These blobs, or bladder-like vesicles, provide the Wandering Sea Anemone with sufficient buoyancy to wander.
Wandering Anemones can cling onto rocks and seaweed when they want to, it's just that they don't always want to. When the spirit of adventure overcomes them, they release their hold and let the current take them to pastures new. They can even use undulations of their tentacles to swim.
That's why they're also known as Swimming Anemones and Beach Ball Anemones.
Yet another name they go by is Brain Anemone. I guess some people prefer the idea of coming across a brain rolling along the sea floor than a pile of jelly beans. There's no accounting for taste.
5 comments:
freaky! a bundt cake covered with candy-coated almonds! :)
The anemones are planning on rising up against us! Everyone, run for the mountains!
I hate it when I reach into a nice big bowl of jellybeans and find it's actually a cluster of tentacles and MOUTHS!
Hey, I saw these things a few weeks ago when I was snorkeling in Kaikoura!
@TexWisGirl: I guess they look either like delicious food or a brain!
@Porakiya Draekojin: Good idea! They probably won't be able to roll uphill!
@Crunchy: At least you shan't want for nightmare material!
@Jacob Littlejohn: Wow! Lucky you!
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