Featured Creature

All the Better to Hug You With - Sunflower star: Pycnopodia helianthoides

This big boy is one of the largest sea stars in the world. It can grow up to one meter (39 inches) across and weigh as much as a large family cat. The sunflower star gets its name from its many arms: it can have up to 24. More arms mean more tube feet – up to 15,000. Despite its girth, the sunflower star can move as quickly as one meter (40 inches) in a minute. Abalone don’t stand a chance! Its skeleton is softer and more flexible than other sea stars. It’s a badass predator that feeds on small and large marine creatures.

Unfortunately, the sunflower star has not escaped Sea Star Wasting Syndrome plaguing stars along the west coast.

The disease begins with white lesions and dying tissue and leads to a "melting" of the sea star. Scientists have found evidence...

The strawberry squid, Histeoteuthis heteropsis, aka “the green-eyed squid” is a member of a group called “the cock-eyed” squids, so named because one eye is larger than the other. Scientists think that the smaller eye has evolved to look down, watching for predators from the depths. The bigger eye looks up, trying to detect the shadows of potential prey against the very faint light from above.

But, many animals in this midwater zone make their own light so they disappear in the faint light from above – called counterillumination. In the “survival game” of evolution, the strawberry squid’s much larger eye has evolved a lens with a fluorescent pigment that absorbs blue light. Researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Institute think...

We typically think of flatworms as being pretty easy going. Not this one. The New Guinea flatworm, is a powerful predator that feeds on other worms, snails and a variety of soil-dwelling creatures. Flatworms come in many varieties, sizes and lifestyles. There are over 20,000 identified species both free-living and parasitic.

The New Guinea flatworm, a land planarian, is in the news since it made “The 100 Worst Invasive Species” list by International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). It is spreading to many corners of the world, gobbling up prey as it goes. Now, the two-inch long flatworm has made it to the continental United States. So what’s the problem with having this invasive flatworm on our shores? It likely has no natural predators, which means it could wreak havoc on soil ecosystems rippling up the food chain to animals, like birds, that feed on earthworms and snails.

Read More:
From IFL Science! New Guinea Flatworm, one of the Worst Known Invasive Species, Found in US
From Science Daily Discovery in the US of the New Guinea flatworm, one of the worst known invasive species
Video: Highly Invasive Snail-Eating Flatworm Species Spotted In U.S.

Watch the Shape of Life Flatworm video: Flatworms: The First Hunter

(Or, what we like to call Sir Lancelet)

We humans have come a long way from our earliest chordates. Amphioxus, or the lancelet, is an animal that comes closer than any other to the transition group between invertebrates and vertebrates. Because they are early chordates and have all the chordate characteristics,. Amphioxus has been essential in understanding vertebrate evolution. Our human evolution.