{"id":139770,"date":"2022-05-24T12:03:34","date_gmt":"2022-05-24T17:03:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/05\/mesodinium-chamaeleon-is-a-unique-life-form-that-is-half-plant-half-animal"},"modified":"2022-05-24T12:03:34","modified_gmt":"2022-05-24T17:03:34","slug":"mesodinium-chamaeleon-is-a-unique-life-form-that-is-half-plant-half-animal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/05\/mesodinium-chamaeleon-is-a-unique-life-form-that-is-half-plant-half-animal","title":{"rendered":"Mesodinium Chamaeleon Is A Unique Life Form That is Half Plant Half Animal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-right: 20px\"><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/mesodinium-chamaeleon-is-a-unique-life-form-that-is-half-plant-half-animal.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Circa 2012<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>In nature, you\u2019ll find animals that undergo vast transformations, becoming almost unrecognizable in their new forms. Examples like caterpillars becoming butterflies and tadpoles becoming frogs almost look like distinct animals in the different stages of their evolution.<\/p>\n<p>While this might sound amazing, all stages of these animals still belong to the same biological taxonomic rank, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Animal\"><em>Animalia<\/em><\/a>. This means that caterpillars don\u2019t become plants, in their new shapes, they remain animals. That\u2019s not what <em>Mesodinium chamaeleon<\/em> does. This single-celled organism is a unique mix of animal and plant life.<\/p>\n<p><em>Mesodinium chamaeleon<\/em>, a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ciliate\">ciliate<\/a> \u2013a group of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Protozoan\">protozoans<\/a> \u2013 found in the oceans around Scandinavia and North America, was discovered in Niv\u00e5 Bay (Baltic Sea) in Denmark by <a href=\"http:\/\/www1.bio.ku.dk\/ansatte\/beskrivelse\/?id=86567\">\u00d8jvind Moestrup<\/a> of the University of Copenhagen and his team. Other specimens have been found off the coasts of Finland and Rhode Island.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Circa 2012 In nature, you\u2019ll find animals that undergo vast transformations, becoming almost unrecognizable in their new forms. Examples like caterpillars becoming butterflies and tadpoles becoming frogs almost look like distinct animals in the different stages of their evolution. While this might sound amazing, all stages of these animals still belong to the same biological [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,385],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological","category-evolution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139770","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\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139770\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}