All living beings are intriguing, and the sheer variety of life is mind boggling. We are used to think of animals like our selves, and plants like the trees and flowers. But in between there are so many fantastic creatures. And the boarder between plants, animals, fungi and protista is more fluent than that. Even we are a mix of animal and bacteria. Our mitochondia which powers our body through chemical reactions is a primitive bacteria that at one point entered into symbiosis with cells that later evolved into what we know as animal cells. We are in a sense a chimaera. Now each cell is totally dependent on each other and cannot survive being apart.
When we dive into the ocean a whole world of creatures that seems strange to us emerge. The Sea Enemony, haven been given it's name due to the similarity with a flowering plant, does indeed look like a plant on first sight. It is a predator that is confined to a stationary adulthood, where it devours prey that happens to come to close to it. In the center of the stalk it has an opening to its digestion system, lined by tentacles that looks like something out of a japanese manga.
There is so much beauty in the details that one wonder how it can even exist. Tentacles reaching out into the salty waters around it, touching upon the unwary passerby.
It makes for a great study in detail and luckily the creature doesn't shy away from being photographed.
The variations in nature is truly magnificent.
