Our Most Recent Addition To The Deep-sea-animals-you've-never-heard-of Collection—a Pelagic Ribbon

Reindeer herding in the Kola Peninsula, Céline Clanet.

Trees in Baran-Eli, 1906, Konstantin Bogaevsky

Pehriska-Ruhpa, Minatarre Warrior in the Costume of the Dog Dance, plate 23 from Volume 2 of ‘Travels in the Interior of North America’, 1844, Karl Bodmer

Medium: aquatint,paper

Ok y’all brace yourselves cuz I just learned about a new animal

Yes, that is an animal. Yes, scientists refer to it as the purple sock worm. No, that’s not it’s real name, silly, it’s real name is Xenoturbella!

When these deep-sea socks were first discovered, no one knew what the fuck they were looking at (and, really, can you blame them?). They have no eyes, brains, or digestive tracts. They are literally just a bag of wet slop. DNA analysis initially seemed to indicate that they were related to mollusks, until the scientists realized that DNA sample was from the clams they had recently eaten (yes, they can eat with no organs. We don’t know how.)

Scientists then analyzed the data again and tentatively placed them in the group that includes acorn worms, saying that their ancestors probably had eyes, brains, and organs, but simplified as a response to their deep sea ecosystems.

Later DNA testing has since shown that they are their own thing! Xenoturbella, along with another simple and problematic to place creature called acoelomorphs, belong to their own phylum called Xenacelomorpha! This places them as the sister group to all bilateral animals. So, they just never evolved brains, eyes, or organs. They are a glimpse at a very primitive form of animal that never bothered to change, because apparently what they do works. Rock on, purple sock worm.

Hermes and his mother Maia (part of a larger scene showing an assembly of the gods).  Detail from Side B of an Attic red-figure belly-amphora, attributed to the Nikoxenos-Painter; ca. 500 BCE.  Now in the Staatliche Antikensammlungen, Munich.

Soundtrack:

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The Good, the Bad and the Ugly • Main Theme • Ennio Morricone

Soundtrack from the 1966 Sergio Leone film "Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo" with Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Eli Wallach, Aldo Giuffre,

30 amazing vintage photos from the set of “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” (1966).

The Ion Tail of New Comet SWAN via NASA https://ift.tt/3bNGnov