what is the most terrifying creature on this planet?
(if you can’t think of one, may i suggest looking up deep sea creatures?)
It would be harmless to a human (and the pale, slimy fish we see here, which seems to spend its whole life as its symbiote) but the sheer idea of Stygiomedusa gigantea is so powerfully haunting it gives me chills to think about; especially from the perspective of its prey.
What you see here is at least twenty feet in length, and they’re seen so rarely they could easily get bigger. Their red-black coloration makes them invisible in the abyss, and they don’t have any stinging tentacles – only the vast oral arms, which as in other jellies are an extension of the digestive lining.
Prey are simply folded up and smothered in the sheets of tissue, and already begin to digest without even being drawn into the bell.
They’re out there, right now, thousands of miles away in the freezing abyss, billowing like huge, empty cloaks, blind and thoughtless. They don’t need to chase their prey. Helpless little things just find themselves trapped in a sticky, living shadow, wrapping up tighter in the membranous jelly the more they struggle. They digest so slowly that exhaustion or suffocation probably kills them first.
Tags:
#creepy #but cool #biology
Brinens and Things 