14 DAY TRIAL // Have a look at your calendars if you need confirmation or, if you're not in the mood to waste precious energy checking the date, take our word for it: April Fools is long gone. That's right, this piece of news is no hoax.
Now, take a deep breath and brace yourselves, as Mother Nature is about to rock your little world.
As it turns out, it's not just fish, whales and plastic bottles that populate global oceans. Au contraire, there are also these bizarre marine monsters that look like inflatable tubes and that can grow to be the size of whales.
Wait, what?
Technically speaking, these tubular ocean dwellers, known to wildlife researchers as pyrosomes, aren't exactly sea monsters. They're not even just one creature.
Instead, they are colonies of teeny tiny animals dubbed zooids. These organisms hate solitude so much that they spend their entire lives together, cuddled up and arranged in cylindrical-shaped formations that look just like sea monsters.
Wildlife researchers say that the tubular and creepily gelatinous pyrosomes formed by zooids can grow to measure over 12 meter (40 feet) from one end to the other.
The reason pyromes appear to move through the water as if they had a mind of their own is that, when feeding, the zooids that form them basically suck in water, get all the nutrients they need and then blow back the waste.
In doing so, the creatures create water currents strong enough to propel the colony and keep it from sinking. When the zooids stop feeding, the colony begins to fall towards the ocean floor.
Since zooids can reproduce by cloning, i.e. by creating hundreds of copies of themselves, just one individual is more than enough to start a colony. In its early days, the colony looks like a jellyfish of sorts. In time, however, it turns into a ginormous worm-like monster.
The creatures light up if disturbed
As if their odd appearance alone weren't enough to spook us, it seems that, when startled, pyromes - better said, the zooids that comprise them - light up. Yup, these creatures sometimes glow.
It is believed that zooids use bioluminescence to signal the members in a colony that they might be in danger and that they should stop feeding and let themselves sink to safety.
