World’s ‘Longest Animal’ Discovered in Australia’s Deep Ocean

Underwater explorers have videoed a strange and record-breaking organism in a deep ocean canyon off Australia. The string-like creature, which was introduced to the internet by the Schmidt Ocean Institute (SOI) on Twitter April 6, is estimated to have an outer ring 154 feet long — the size of an 11-story building — and a possible total length of more than 390 feet, Newsweek reported . "We think it’s the longest animal recorded to date," SOI director of marine communications Carlie Wiener told USA TODAY . Check out this beautiful *giant* siphonophore Apolemia recorded on #NingalooCanyons expedition. It seems likely tha… https://t.co/oiNIRLrJZ8 — Schmidt Ocean (@Schmidt Ocean) 1586198064.0 But the creature isn’t, strictly speaking, one animal. Instead, it’s a genus of siphonophore called Apolemia, as Live Science explained : Every individual siphonophore is made up of many little "zooids," which each live lives that are more similar to animals we’re used to talking about, albeit always connected to the larger colony. Zooids are born axsexually, and each one performs a function for the siphonophore’s larger body, according to a research article published in the journal Developmental Dynamics in 2005. Linked together in long chains, the colonies were already known […]

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