Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain stuff,
Speaker 1: this is Christian Seger. Lagoons are famous for creepy swamp creatures,
Speaker 1: but in a Canadian park in Vancouver, British Columbia, scientists
Speaker 1: have found something possibly just as outlandish, A slimy, gelatinous
Speaker 1: brain blob. Well, okay, it's not really a brain, and
Speaker 1: it's not really even an it. It's a collection of
Speaker 1: tiny creatures. Collectively called a magnificent brio zoan, or also
Speaker 1: known by its Latin name as Pectinatella magnifica. This colony
Speaker 1: forms a brain shaped mass that can grow to be
Speaker 1: larger than a human head. And I think we can
Speaker 1: all agree that's also really weird, now, Brian Zowan's. Sometimes
Speaker 1: they're also called moss animals. They're an ancient group of
Speaker 1: filter feeders. The earliest fossil evidence of one of these
Speaker 1: colonies can be dated back about four hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: million years. Individually, each tiny invertebrate, called a zooid, can
Speaker 1: just barely be seen with the naked eye. It's only
Speaker 1: about half a millimeter or about point zero two inches long,
Speaker 1: but when hundreds of them assemble, they can glue themselves
Speaker 1: together with a special protein to form all sorts of shapes, sheets, columns,
Speaker 1: and even branched tree like structures. Now actually fossilized. Briozoans
Speaker 1: are among the world's most abundant fossils as well, and
Speaker 1: you can find them in rocks originating more than four
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty million years ago up until the present.
Speaker 1: Their colonies start with a single zooid, which a sexually
Speaker 1: reproduces until it's got an entire army of clones to
Speaker 1: hang out with. Most briozoan species live in marine habitats,
Speaker 1: but the one found in Vancouver's Stanley Park belongs in freshwater.
Speaker 1: It just doesn't really belong in Vancouver, Canada. This August,
Speaker 1: the Stanley Park Ecology Society held its annual bio Blitz,
Speaker 1: a community event in which citizens scientists survey the park,
Speaker 1: identifying hundreds of organisms in twenty four hours. In the
Speaker 1: Lost Lagoon, which is the park's biofiltration pond, Blitz goers
Speaker 1: discovered the giant, slimy football shaped brio Zonan, thousands of
Speaker 1: miles from home. Their usual range is decidedly to the
Speaker 1: south of Canada and east of the Mississippi River, and
Speaker 1: it turns out This isn't the first time a magnificent
Speaker 1: Brian zone has been found in this part of Canada,
Speaker 1: and nobody can tell whether they're staying either, but why
Speaker 1: they're there is a different question. Like with most migrating
Speaker 1: organisms these days, warming global tem pictures might have opened
Speaker 1: the door of the Great White North to these probably
Speaker 1: ecologically harmless blobs. They need a water temperature warmer than
Speaker 1: sixty degrees fahrenheit or sixteen degrees celsius in order to
Speaker 1: make a go of it. Today's episode was written by
Speaker 1: Jescelyn Shields, produced by Dylan Fagan, and for more on
Speaker 1: this and other topics, please visit us at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com.