Crazy for crinoids

i-10ff511356507f12079b1fded01e4bc4-gymno-holopus.jpgChris Mah's Echinoblog is off and running with a wealth of weirdness. Today he features the crinoidea, or crinoids, with some terrific images of open and close-fisted crinoid forms I've never seen before, and frankly, scare the daylights out of me (see the image from Charles Messing at Chris' website).

It's scary enough being in a research submarine, as if you need to worry about scaled urchins and the like. I never realized echinoderms were so... creepy. Now I'm worried.

Echinoblog made my day!

And gave me all sorts of crochet-ideas....

Bwahahahaha!

right now I am looking through the logs and video from a 2005 voyage to find the one HD shot they really want of 20-30 or so crinoids covering a sponge at around 2500m. Truely a scene of nightmares, especially when they all take to the water and "fly" towards the camera in a scene reminiscent of Hitchcock's The Birds.