Real life sucks losers dry

🎵Look at this critter, isn’t it neat? Siphonophores make the deep sea complete. Drifting around here you think, the deep sea has everything.

There are fishes and jellies aplenty. There are crabs and sea stars galore. You want isopods? There are many. And we care, they’re a big deal, we want to know moooooooore!

We want to be where the siphonophores are, we want to sea, want to sea them drifting…🎵

While siphonophores look like one animal, they’re actually colonies of individual animals, called zooids, that work together. Each connected zooid has a specialized role—such as swimming, feeding, or reproducing—and shares a single gut.

This photo of a common siphonophore (Nanomia bijuga) shows off its delightful orange stinging tentacles, circular zooids called nectophores that contract to help the colony swim, and a tiny bubble-like pneumatophore that helps the animal float.