Don’t look now, but there a scary new sea creature blowing up on the internet.
The clip above is believed to have been filmed by deep sea divers working on an oil well, and features a bizarre looking entity that ripples around in the water.
Theories about the mysterious beast range from a new kind of jellyfish to an unknown marine version of the Loch Ness monster to a gigantic whale placenta.
Scale in the video isn’t immediately clear, so it’s difficult to fathom (see what I did there?) just how large the creature is.
Several experts seem to be pretty certain that they know what this thing is.
According to NineMSN, ”Southern Cross University marine biology lecturer Dr. Daniel Bucher told ninemsn the giveaway was its sex organs. ‘In last the 30 seconds or so you start to see more of the structure, these pendulous tubes with four or five whitish structures and some branching between them, which look to me like the gonads of a jellyfish,’ Dr. Bucher said. ‘I have no idea what species it would be, but if I had to say it would be a very unusual shape deep sea jellyfish.’”
The popular thinking is that this “cascade creature,” as it’s being called on the web, belongs to the species Deepstaria enigmatica, a poorly understood and rarely seen specimen found in deep water.
According to the Marine Species Identification Portal, the Deepstaria enigmatica has a bell (top canopy membrane) that is “remarkably thin, broad, delicate, a rather flat inverted bowl when relaxed” and reaches about 60 centimeters (2 feet) in diameter.
Whatever is is, it’s popular. The video above has been views over 2.5 million times in the past two weeks. I think we can all agree that the important thing is – if you ever see one, run away…FAST…and then KILL IT WITH FIRE!
Mobile users:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E-8_wDgN7c
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