Weird Things

Zoologger: The most bizarre life story on Earth?


Zoologger is our weekly column highlighting extraordinary animals – and occasionally other organisms – from around the world.

Species: Symbion pandora

Habitat: In the eastern Atlantic Ocean – on the mouthparts of Norway lobsters (also known as Dublin Bay prawns or langoustines)

There’s no question that discovering a new species is very cool. But how about discovering a new phylum?7eb7995c83d6a9de8d3f5b1f18be205a Zoologger: The most bizarre life story on Earth?

A phylum is a broad division in taxonomy: all vertebrates, for example, from fish to humans, are in the chordate phylum. In 1995, Peter Funch and Reinhardt Møbjerg Kristensen, both then at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, discovered an animal so unlike any other that a new phylum – Cycliophora – had to be created just for it.

Read more: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18834-zoologger-the-most-bizarre-life-story-on-earth.html

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