I photographed this life form recently, and was intrigued by this particular frame. It reminds me of any number of things, but is hard to pin down, so I am making it into one of my infrequent quiz photos. After any interested friends have responded, I will upload other photos that will make the ID clear. I ran it through the AI suggestions, and it is flummoxed–interesting!
Link to observation:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/62721926
I hope this is not inappropriate for this forum. I have done these before on Flickr, but never on iNaturalist.
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I’m personally not into iNaturalist or the iNaturalist Forum being used for things like this.
It definitely doesn’t belong in the General category, though, as the About topic says:
This is a place to discuss general iNaturalist-related topics
So I’ve moved it to Nature Talk.
Oh thanks, I looked at that as well–makes perfect sense.
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And I promise not to clutter up iNaturalist forum or my iNaturalist stream with this sort of thing. This one was just so interesting, visually. I also wanted to see if the AI would come up with it. Very surprised that it did not, at least without giving it a hint on the phylum.
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Sand Dollar?
Sea star. One of the many-rayed “sun star” kinds.
Sea star
@schizoform and @jasonhernandez74 as well–yes, it really does look like an echinoderm or a coral, but it is not–it is a terrestrial organism and the photo was taken last week in Durham, North Carolina (USA).
If anyone wants to make more guesses today, that would be fun, then I will post some more revealing photos tomorrow. I had taken several photos of this organism and it was only when I looked at this highest magnification one that I was struck by how odd it looked. The appearance was, to me, quite unexpected.
Again, I am totally offering this in the spirit of having fun with nature.
My first guess was hedgehog, but I guess they do not have those in Durham, NC
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Are they the segments of a moth or sawfly larva?
Oh, interesting ideas everyone. This is a Lion’s Mane mushroom, Hericium erinaceus. A couple of participants got it on the iNaturalist observation itself–very impressive! To me, the close-up view was totally unexpected–resembling a marine creature of some sort, not a fungus.
I am going to upload more photos showing the whole fungal mass.
Edit–here is the whole thing, growing out of a tree:
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Nice - I first encountered these within the last year, and would never have guessed from the close-up. That was fun.
Sesame Street used to have a game like this: show a series of close-ups of something, and only at the end reveal what it is.
Oh, you wanted real answers.
I was going to say it looked like a fuzzy bathmat
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