{"id":105319,"date":"2020-04-14T11:04:31","date_gmt":"2020-04-14T18:04:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/longest-animal-ever-discovered-in-deep-sea-canyon-off-australian-coast"},"modified":"2020-04-14T11:04:31","modified_gmt":"2020-04-14T18:04:31","slug":"longest-animal-ever-discovered-in-deep-sea-canyon-off-australian-coast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/longest-animal-ever-discovered-in-deep-sea-canyon-off-australian-coast","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Longest animal ever\u2019 discovered in deep-sea canyon off Australian coast"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/longest-animal-ever-discovered-in-deep-sea-canyon-off-australian-coast2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Underwater explorers found a 150-foot-long (45 meters) siphonophore \u2014 a translucent, stringy creature that, like coral, is made up of smaller critters \u2014 living in a submarine canyon off the coast of Australia. It\u2019s \u201cseemingly the largest animal ever discovered,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n<p>Every individual siphonophore is made up of many little \u201czooids,\u201d which each live lives that are more similar to animals we\u2019re used to talking about, albeit always connected to the larger colony. Zooids are born axsexually, and each one performs a function for the siphonophore\u2019s larger body, according to a research article published in the journal <a data-original-href=\"https:\/\/anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/full\/10.1002\/dvdy.20483\" href=\"https:\/\/anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/full\/10.1002\/dvdy.20483\" target=\"_top\">Developmental Dynamics<\/a> in 2005. Linked together in long chains, the colonies were already known to reach lengths of up to 130 feet (40 m) <a data-original-href=\"https:\/\/www.montereybayaquarium.org\/animals\/animals-a-to-z\/giant-siphonophore\" href=\"https:\/\/www.montereybayaquarium.org\/animals\/animals-a-to-z\/giant-siphonophore\" target=\"_top\">according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium<\/a> \u2014 though each siphonophore is only about as thick as a broomstick.<\/p>\n<p>The new, record-setting siphonophore was one of several discoveries made by a team aboard the research vessel Falkor while exploring deep-sea canyons near Australia\u2019s Ningaloo Coast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Underwater explorers found a 150-foot-long (45 meters) siphonophore \u2014 a translucent, stringy creature that, like coral, is made up of smaller critters \u2014 living in a submarine canyon off the coast of Australia. It\u2019s \u201cseemingly the largest animal ever discovered,\u201d they said. Every individual siphonophore is made up of many little \u201czooids,\u201d which each live [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":551,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-futurism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/551"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105319\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}