Friday 27 October 2017

Don't Smell the Roses


Remember how hard-working, deep sea sponges look like satellite dishes and mouths-on-sticks?

It's important to note that that's just part of the story. Another part of the story involves the flowers... OF DEATH.


Yup. Some sponges have decided that if food is so hard to come by, why settle for crumbs? It's time for the big guns to come out and catch some big game. In other words, shrimp!

Sure, that's not particularly big by our standards. I know there are some fancy restaurants out there which serve tiny outcrops of food in the middle of a porcelain desert, but surely even they would draw the line at a single shrimp. Wouldn't they?

Then again, sponges typically eat bacteria and the like, so an entire shrimp is quite the feast. Some of these carnivorous sponges look just like flowers, with a stem and spiky petals. They even have a kind of root-like system that keeps them firmly attached to the seabed.


You don't even have to miss the satellite dishes. Some species have several!

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