Every time I look at the picture of the creature, I can't believe it's a real, living creature on Earth (in Chile). It is probably the strangest animal I have ever seen. It looks like a stone filled with bloody goop, but is in the sea squirt group, and feeds on algae from a siphon. The red color isn't from its blood - it has clear blood - but Chileans like to eat them raw or cooked.
Even weirder, they can concentrate up to 10 million times the natural concentration of the rare element vanadium in their bodies, and scientists do not know why.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/running-ponies/2012/06/21/pyura-chilensis-the-closest-thing-to-getting-blood-from-a-stone/
Even weirder, they can concentrate up to 10 million times the natural concentration of the rare element vanadium in their bodies, and scientists do not know why.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/running-ponies/2012/06/21/pyura-chilensis-the-closest-thing-to-getting-blood-from-a-stone/
Photo credit: Arvid Puschnig