Is this the longest animal in the world?

A submersible off the coast of Western Australia has found a 45-metre-long deep-sea siphonophore lying on a feeder coil, trailing its deadly tentacles.

In 2020, about 600 meters down in an underwater canyon off the coast of Western Australia, scientists found a long gelatinous creature suspended in a giant spiral. “It was like a rope on the horizon. You couldn’t miss it,” says Nerida Wilson of the Western Australian Museum. “It was so big”.

It was a deep-sea siphonophore, a relative of the Portuguese caravel, or blue bottle, that bobs like party balloons on the surface of the sea, dragging deadly tentacles through the water. This was probably a new species of the genus polemic a group that often look like matted feather boas.

The longest animal in the world is believed to be a 45 meter long deep-sea siphonophore – video

The spiral arrangement is known to be a feeding posture in this type of siphonophores. Numerous stinging tentacles create a wall of death in the water, trapping small prey including crustaceans and fish.

Finding him was one of the chance encounters common in deep sea research. The scientists’ goal was to study life deep beneath the seafloor, and they found this floating jellyfish while their submersible was in a two-hour transit back to their ship, the research vessel Falkor, then led by the Schmidt Ocean Institute.

What is it?

Screens in different parts of Falkor broadcast live images of the submersible. Wilson describes how everyone on board was simultaneously mesmerized and baffled when the massive spiral appeared. Everyone went to the control room to get a better look. “It was such a beautiful energy,” says Wilson. “Everyone was like, ‘What is this?’”

The time was already short because the dive had exceeded the schedule, so the pilot of the submersible, controlling it from the surface, was only able to spend a few moments with the animal. “We went around, took some images and a small tissue sample,” says Wilson. “So we just had to go on our merry way.”

Siphonophores look like jellyfish and belong to the same group of animals, but they build their bodies in a unique way, more like hundreds of tiny jellyfish glued together. However, a siphonophore is a single organism. “He had two dads,” says Wilson. “It was a product of sex.”

Rather than growing in a more conventional way into a body with organs that perform different functions, siphonophores consist of individual parts called zooids. Some zooids are responsible for feeding, others for reproduction and others move around and lead the animal through the water. “They’re just an example of doing things a little differently,” says Wilson. “They are one and they are many.”

apolemia siphonophore

Based on a rough calculation of the submersible’s trajectory, the spiral-shaped siphonophore is a candidate for the longest specimen ever found. At around 45 meters, it might even be the longest animal ever measured, much longer than a blue whale.

Reluctant to claim any world records yet, Wilson is working with an expert in photogrammetry to get a more accurate estimate of the siphonophore’s size. It is not an easy task to extract three-dimensional information from the video, because the siphonophore moved in the wake of the submersible’s thrusters. “Usually with photogrammetry, you go back and forth over a fixed object,” says Wilson. “This is technically a bit more challenging.”

By Helen Scales. Article in English

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