I recently was tidepooling a little rocky beach in Acadia National Park and found this thing. I don’t know what it is, and just went with the most likely (but still unlikely) CV suggestion. I wanted to know, what are your most baffling, most unexpected, most alien-like observations?
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That is so cool looking! they all have different amounts of ‘arms’. I have also found some pretty odd stuff:
this one appears to be a piece of an arthropod, but I’m not sure what kind.
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Diastrophus…
this one is on a red raspberry https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/213537589
this one is on common cinquefoil https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/226988848
and this one is on thimbleberry https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/230375338
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Credit to @Mercedes-Fletcher’s forum topic What are your favorite projects?, take a look at Weird Wild Wonders project.
Edit: @Brycetheplant’s comment above reminded me of these leaf galls which are pretty strange!
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This beetle, which mimics a spider in look and movement. I was really confused.
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The weirdest thing I found is a bunch of ciliates: This Spirostomum conglomeration appeared randomly in our garden pond in huge numbers. One day the entire pond was suddenly almost completely yellowish. Thinking it was some sort of algal bloom I gathered a jar of them to look at them under a microscope and turns out it was these guys instead.
Most interesting though is their behaviour. They all simultaneously contract when they feel a shock or something. It happens so fast that even the slo-mo wasn’t enough to make it visible. (The observation includes a GIF)
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Recently, I found a fully intact horse skull just lying on the road.
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That is so lucky! I hope you kept it, I have yet to aquire a horse skull. Did you make an observation for it?
Hmm… I actually haven’t posted it yet, but I will soon! It’s still waiting in my collection of photos to be uploaded. Once I get through them, I’ll share the horse skull on iNaturalist. It was such an interesting find, so I’m looking forward to adding it to my observations
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If we’re going by most alien observation then I’ll have to go with these drone fly larva I found in a sled full of water in my backyard.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/237737990
They may not be super uncommon, but definitely strange looking. I had no idea what they were when I found them.
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Transparency always qualifies as weird wherever it occurs! (In biology.)
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