Charles Messing graciously shared these pictures with DSN of crawling crinoids. You can see the full movie here.
Cenocrinus asterius, a larger species, in the process of crawling up a roch off of Grand Cayman Island at about 228m
Neocrinus decorus in normal feeding posture at the study site in the Bahamas where the creeping specimen was photgraphed
More like this
A relative of the starfish, crinoids are neither abundant nor well understood. Also known as "sea lilies" or "feather stars" the strange creatures consist of a mouthpart, feeding arms and generally have a stem that connects them to the sea floor.
Our most popular post from our Blogger days did not fair so well in the migration to SB and Movable Type. I am reposting it here now for posterity.
This is just plain awesome. Thanks for posting this! Thanks to Charles Messing for sharing these pictures and video.
that has got to be one of the most dr seuss-ian critters i've ever seen... like a crawling truffula tree...
Totally kewl!
Cenocrinus asterius - oh so creepy, but I can't stop looking! Reminds me of a feather duster...Thanks for the post and the opportunity to learn about something new :)