Okay, identify this thing. If you’ve already seen it today, you can’t guess.
You get no prizes except for my warm approbation.
Answer tomorrow.
What is it?
February 21, 2012 • 3:18 pm
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Tardigrade?
Is it an Onychophora?
William Lane Craig, the morning after the night before?
The likeness is astounding!
Me, after the Sunday parades in New Orleans.
Embryonic Pepe doing a practice spit take
The head lice going around my daughter’s school?
Hah! My daughter’s too.
The stuff my nightmares are made of.
+1
I’m going with something in the Platyhelminthes phylum.
The most recent addition to the muppet show?
Sesame Street gone wild?
A polychaete Annelid
da winna
Indeed. Nice ID when one of the definitive features, the chaetae, are hard to see in that image.
Atheist in the eyes of firm believer?
No, but I think I saw it on SyFy last night.
I just showed my freshmen a gallery of such mugs last week, so I know the answer but will recuse myself. Can I leave a hint?
It’s not an ecdysozoan.
God; I know, He told me so!
an evil muppet.
The “blast” end of a Blast-End Skrewt.
My Ex
Nancy Grace without her makeup?
Alitta succinea…?
An electron microphotograph (false colour, obviously).
Well played. 😉
Forget what it is – how do we kill it?
+1
No no let’s not kill it rather can we let go free in Washington DC?
Looks very like this annelid ventworm nereis Sp
http://www.serpentproject.com/assets/images/image%20comp%203/image%20comp%203.swf
The sockety spiky things suggested echinoderm, so I at first wondered about some aberrant worm-like holothurian. But holothurians don’t have eyes. These ones look like primitive COMPOUND eyes, so I next thought polychaete, which is my final bet – but not a very confident one. Whatever it is, it is amazing. Isn’t evolution wonderful.
Are you sure those are eyes? They look like some sort of chemical (rather than electromagnetic) detectors.
The Intelligent Designer definitely has problems working after indulging in the Communion wine.
?
Why would you expect primitive compound eyes in annelids?
By analogy with similar photos of Nereis specimens I have around here (they have cool jaws this guy doesn’t have) what appear to be «eyes» are articulated palps with tiny sensory cillia.
I dunno, but coming soon to a 3D theater near you.
Either it’s a latest creation of The Muppets Studio, or perhaps the head of a tick?
Am cracking up that I appear to be the third person to see a muppet.
’Twas my first thought, too!
/@
A newly-discovered sketch by S. Dali?
Nope: No drawers and not enough knees.
OT: Isn’t that a wonderfully minimalist Google doodle?
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Hmm… although it’s not properly sinusoidal… I’m going to have to claw some points back, Google.
/@
It’s a rubber hand puppet.
It’s clearly the googley-eyed Lord Christopher The Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley without his wig.
AKA Sacha Baron Cohen!
Re Sacha baron Cohen being Lord Monckton, he’s not. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/oct/21/lord-monckton-sacha-baron-cohen (amongst others) for details.
Cheers,
Norm.
A polychaete of course.
Beautiful?
Not so beautiful when they take residence under your toe nail.
Mother Teresa’s chest.
I don’t think it’s a cat.
A Sandworm from Arrakis?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthpicturegalleries/9093312/Creatures-of-the-deep-terrifying-macro-pictures-of-polychaetes-or-bristle-worms.html
You got it. Amazing. I would gather that the “eyes” don’t process a lot of optical data.
I’m not sure but it remainds me of Rick Santorum.
So which worm are you insulting? 😉
It could be the early foetal stage of something.
Rick Santorum?
Looks like I wasn’t the only one to notice the resemblance.
A new species from Lake Vostok?
Ogdu hem?
My first thought was an underwater worm, and my second was the sandworm from the movie Beetlejuice. Nice eyes!
Ijust ask Adam Lusher: it’s Dawkins’s ancestor!
All my research points to it being a Martian Popping Thing.
Quidam got it I think.
Follow-up question: was this produced by natural selection or by genetic drift?
An arthropod’s penis. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
I was gonna guess polychaete before I read any of the already tendered guesses. Honest!
Ia Ia Cthulhu fhtagn!
Just got it: Angelina Jolie standing on her head.
What function might the hairs have? Anchoring it after burrowing into something? I would say Demodex folliculorum as they are my favourite mites, but suppose them to be smaller…
One of Madonna’s old bras?
There is a distinct resemblance to my former father-in-law
FSM-inspired sex toy.
Google Image Search win.
V. Gov. Bob McDonnell