#pycnogonid

some bug comms!

✨ Mutation March, day 23 - sea spider ✨

Jerboa weirdness: "bro has stilts for legs. a dang bird-mouse. sneefing and snorfing"

Jerboa may be cute but y’know what else they are? Basic. Jumping rodents have independently evolved at least five other times, and jerboa’s ain’t even the only bipedal ones. I would also argue that they ain’t even the weirdest looking ones (looking at you, springhaas)

On the other hand, sea spiders are next-level bizarre. They’re bodies are so small that their digestive organs are stuffed into their legs. Since their legs are full of organ, some small species only have a single muscle cell in each leg. They don’t have a goddamn respiratory system, they just absorb oxygen via their legs and spread it through the body via diffusion. A sea spider’s heart is so small that it can’t actually pump blood into the legs, so it uses wave-like contractions of the digestive tract instead.

And despite the fact that they seem to have min-maxed their bodyplan to be as Leg™️ as physically possible, their larvae don’t even start out with any proper legs!! And apparently larvae are parasitic as well? The fact that these creatures are even remotely functional is mind-boggling to me. As of the time of writing, sea spiders are losing the polls and the fact that this absolute mess of a not-spider is losing to a perfectly functional rodent in the first round is a travesty. VOTE SEA SPIDER SO THEY MAY RETAIN THEIR RIGHTFUL PLACE IN THE WIERD ANIMAL TOURNAMENT

Sea Spiders are not related to land spiders, as they are an entirely separate class of animals, known as pycnogonids.

Pycnogonids are "suctorial" predators—most species feed by sucking the bodily fluids from other marine animals.

Deep-sea pycnogonids can grow to over 50 centimeters (20 inches) across, and spend much of their time on the open seafloor. This deep-sea pycnogonid was photographed 2895 meters deep, hunched over a pom-pom anemone, with its proboscis inserted into one of the anemone's tentacles.

Apparently, large anemones can survive numerous such attacks, providing a "renewable resource" for nearby pycnogonids.