Flying Spaghetti Monster
This pasta is alive....A team from energy giant BP recently stumbled upon a wiggly, pasta-like creature more than 4,000 feet under water off the Angola coast while using a remotely operated deep-sea vehicle for oil well maintenance, according to the journal New Scientist.
This unusual marine animal is a speciemen of bathyphysa conifera, in the order of the siphonophorae. Each siphonophore begins as a single fertilized egg that reproduces asexually by cloning itself, sometimes thousands of times. Each new zooid has its own role within the colony and functions with the other clones as one living siphonophore.
The creature appears spaghetti-like because the stem is contracted up so that all the feeding zooids are jam-packed together.
Reference:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28022-flying-spaghetti-monster-caught-on-video-off-the-angolan-coast/
Article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/08/11/this-deep-sea-creature-looks-just-like-the-flying-spaghetti-monster/
#biodiversity #marinecreatures #siphonophorae
