typhlonectes:

This bizarre bubble creature is a single living cell

By Bec Crew | April 23, 2019

You know what’s weird? Looking at something large enough to hold in your hand and knowing it’s made up of a single, solitary cell.

WE’RE USED TO thinking about cells as microscopic building blocks of life – more than 37 trillion of them knit together to create humans, and you need about 5 million to make a fly. Of course, we learn in high school biology that there are simple, single-celled organisms, but we’re used to them looking…

Microscopic. Impossible to perceive with the naked eye.

But then there’s bubble algae (Ventricaria ventricosa, formerly Valonia ventricosa), a species that is neither plant, nor animal, and at up to 9 cm in diameter, and is one of the largest single-celled organisms on Earth.

Found in tropical and subtropical ocean waters across the globe, including off the coast of Australia, bubble algae sit among coral rubble and mangroves, their unusual sheen making them appear like giant pearls below the surface…

Read more: Australian Geographic

photograph by Haplochromis/Wikimedia  CC