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Tuesday, December 2

Giant amoebas found rolling on sea floor

Using a research submarine, marine biologists in the Bahamas have discovered large numbers of an unknown, grape-sized, single-celled animal slowly rolling across the sea floor.

"[It's] huge for a single cell. If I had cells that big I'd be six kilometres tall and weigh three trillion kilograms," said Sönke Johnsen, a biologist at Duke University in North Carolina, and the expedition's chief scientist.

Single-celled animals, known as protists, are usually the size of a pin-head or much smaller, but the size of this "sea-grape" isn't the most unusual thing about it.

"We watched the video over and over," said Johnsen. "We argued about it forever… [we thought] these things can't possibly be moving. There are other large protists, but none of them move." [MORE]

Labels: weird news

posted by Mike Tresca at 6:33 AM

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