Chris Mah's Echinoblog is off and running with a wealth of weirdness. Today he features the crinoidea, or crinoids, with some terrific images of open and close-fisted crinoid forms I've never seen before, and frankly, scare the daylights out of me (see the image from Charles Messing at Chris' website).
It's scary enough being in a research submarine, as if you need to worry about scaled urchins and the like. I never realized echinoderms were so... creepy. Now I'm worried.
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Everyone knows that some terrestrial animals are active primarily at night and sleep most of the day, while others go about their business during daylight hours and rest when it's dark.
A relative of the starfish, crinoids are neither abundant nor well understood. Also known as "sea lilies" or "feather stars" the strange creatures consist of a mouthpart, feeding arms and generally have a stem that connects them to the sea floor.
Our most popular post from our Blogger days did not fair so well in the migration to SB and Movable Type. I am reposting it here now for posterity.
Echinoblog made my day!
And gave me all sorts of crochet-ideas....
Bwahahahaha!
right now I am looking through the logs and video from a 2005 voyage to find the one HD shot they really want of 20-30 or so crinoids covering a sponge at around 2500m. Truely a scene of nightmares, especially when they all take to the water and "fly" towards the camera in a scene reminiscent of Hitchcock's The Birds.
The Gulf of Alaska Seamount expedition video at YouTube opens with a beautiful shot of a swimming crinoid. Their means of midwater locomotion is extraordinary.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdrdAt3T8UM