Mary’s Monday Metazoan: Vortices!


Oooh, beautiful. Starfish larvae are covered with beating cilia that they use to swim, and also to swirl bacteria towards their mouth…and in this video that visualizes the motion generated by the cilia, you can see that they do both at the same time.

Comments

  1. dhabecker says

    The one enlarged view looks like a scan of Trumps brain with shit swirling round and round reinforcing the stupidity going on inside.

  2. emergence says

    It’s cool how echinoderms change so drastically between their larval and adult forms. It’s like you took a bilaterally-symmetrical animal and warped it into a radial arrangement.

    Also interesting is how water behaves at different scales. Look at how viscous it is when you’re as small as one of these larvae.

  3. cherbear says

    The only thing I could think of while watching the video is “om nom nom nom”.

  4. rinn says

    I have an uneasy feeling that this is another video that Creationi… ehmm… ID proponents will use as evidence for “specified complexity.” I hope I am wrong and starfish larvae will be spared the indignity.

  5. davidc1 says

    As a Brit ,i always though cilia was the first name of a singer from Liverpool .HAHA .
    The still photo reminds me of a Van Gogh painting .