Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hi brain Stuff.
Speaker 1: Lauren bog Obam here with another classic episode from our
Speaker 1: previous host, Christian Sager. This one is about a particularly
Speaker 1: strange type of tiny creature and almost microscopic invertebrate that
Speaker 1: forms up into relatively huge colonies that look like big
Speaker 1: old mossy brains. I'll let Christian explain, Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: this is Christian Sager. 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 Zoans 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. Brio
Speaker 1: Zoans are among the world's most abundant fossils as well,
Speaker 1: and you can find them in rocks originating more than
Speaker 1: four 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 zoan 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: brow 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 temperatures might have opened the
Speaker 1: door of the Great White North to these probably ecologically
Speaker 1: harmless blobs. They need a water temperature warmer than sixty
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit or sixteen degrees celsius in order to make
Speaker 1: a go of it. Today's episode was written by Jesslin
Speaker 1: Shields and produced by Dylan Fagan and Tyler Klang. For
Speaker 1: more on this and lots of other curious topics, visit
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff has production off
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