In an interesting news, scientists claim to have discovered the longest creature to ever walk or rather swim the earth – a 150-foot siphonophore. The discovery was the result of a month-long expedition that additionally found 30 more species of creatures like glass sponges, long-tailed sea cucumbers, octopus squid and more.
In the video below, one can see a massive gelatinous string siphonophore. For the unknown, siphonophore is a colony of small sea creatures from the Hydrozoans order. These members are called zooids.
Zooids in siphonophore have this capability to clone themselves and link with each other because of their specialized bodies.
The exploration was conducted by a team from the Western Australian Museum, Curtin University, Geoscience Australia and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Schmidt Ocean Institute’s research vessel Falkor explored the Ningaloo Canyons in the Indian Ocean.
A depth of almost 4,500 metre was explored using robots for over 181 hours for making such discoveries. The robot helped scientists discover 30 new underwater species.
Also Read: 13 Weird Looking Paintings That Were Actually Sold For Millions
According to the Schmidt Ocean Institute, scientists also found the first giant hydroids in Australia and also discovered large communities of glass sponges in Cape Range Canyon. They also observed a bioluminescent octopus squid along with species of long-tailed sea cucumbers, molluscs, barnacles and squat lobsters.
All of these discoveries and 181 hours of footage is on Schmidt Ocean’s YouTube channel.
And if you want to know about the longest tree to ever exist on earth, then you might want to check out this story.
