This Rock Is The Weirdest Animal You Will Ever See

Welcome to another post of my strange animals series where you get to meet some of the weirdest, coolest, and craziest animals on a daily basis!

Ever wondered what's the world's weirdest looking animal? If you ask me, it's a rock. You heard that right, a bloody rock:

Credit: Arvid Puschnig

Ok, ok. It's not a rock but it definitely looks like one, until someone slices it in half that is.. Meet, Pyura chilensis, known as piure in Spanish, a tunicate of the family Pyuridae. Never heard of tunicates?

Without getting too much off topic, tunicates are marine invertebrate animals that spend most of their lives motionless, attached to docks, rocks and other hard surfaces. Oh yeah, they come in some pretty cool & trippy designs too:

Polycarpa aurata (credit)

Rhopalaea Crassa (credit)

Rhopalaea Sp (cre dit)

Clavelina moluccensis (credit)

For some reason, Pyura chilensis decided to stand out from the rest of his relatives by looking like a boring rock..with guts!

Now let's learn more about this weird creature, starting with a brief history lesson :)

History

The first written mention of the creature comes from 1782, by Chilean abbot Juan Ignacio Molina, in his book "Saggio Sulla Storia Naturale del Chili.". The book describes the life of Chileans in the Chiloe Archipelago and among other things he mentions that P. chilensis was one of their sources for food. [1,2]

Where Can I find One?

Surprisingly, this alien rock thing can be found on planet Earth, usually occurring in dense aggregations in the intertidal and subtidal coast of Chile and Peru. Sometimes individuals occur in small patches or even alone.

Pyura chilensis) at Maitencillo Chile, in the Valparaíso Region (credit)

What's with the red liquid inside?

Crack one of those suckers open and immediately a red liquid starts oozing out. Is it blood? Oh, yeah it is!

What's so strange about it, is that it can accumulate extremely high amounts of a rare element called vanadium. Although extremely rare in nature, for some unknown reason P. chilensis and other tunicates have plenty of it inside! According to Scientific American, the concentration of vanadium in their blood can be up to 10 million times that of the surrounding seawater! [3]

What and how does it eat?

This motionless creature feeds by inhaling seawater. Don't try this at home! Once inhaled, the water is filtered for tiny algae using a moving layer of mucus in its enlarged pharynx.

What about sex?

Apparently, some scientists wondered the exact same thing, so they did some research and in 2005 published a paper on how these rocks have sex! [4]

What they found is that individuals are born as male, become hermaphroditic at puberty, and reproduce by releasing clouds of sperm and eggs into the surrounding water. The collision of the two results in tiny tadpole off-springs that eventually settle onto a hard surface and grow into the adult form.

An individual can have sex with itself although it prefers the warm company of other horny rocks when given the chance.

I am hungry. Is it tasty?

Since the creature is even eaten raw by Chileans, I would guess it tastes good enough. The taste has been described to be reminiscent of iodine (maybe because of the vanadium?) or "something like a sea urchin though less delicate in flavor" with a "slightly bitter, soapy taste".

In case you plan to go and eat a bunch be warned. There have been some toxicity concerns raised, due to the animal's high concentration in vanadium.

I would eat that ! (credit)

The End

So, this is pretty much all the basics you need to know about this self-sexing rock. See you tomorrow, in my next strange animals post.

In the meantime, enjoy this German guy killing a bunch of them for no apparent reason:

I am german-challenged so I asked my fellow steemer Hive account@suesa (she writes some pretty good stuff check her!) if she could shed some light.

Here's what she said:

"They talk about people eating that and say it looks awfully disgusting. A woman asks who wants a bite but everybody refuses comparing it to some horror movie-like creature. They also wonder if they have to cook it first. So in conclusion, just some people messing around with this poor thing"

Dumbasses..

References

My dear readers, thank you for reading today's article. Hopefully, you found it interesting enough to follow me, @trumpman. You may also want to check my strange animal series where you get to discover some of the world's weirdest animals! Here are the last 5 weirdos of the series:

Steemstem & Steemiteducation
Interested in science? Please, don't forget to check the @steemstem, a community-driven project meant to promote well-written, high-quality, STEM-related content (STEM as for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). Just click here to join us! Also a big thank you goes to the @steemiteducation project for liking and sharing my content. Check em out, they have some cool stuff :)

Greek Community
A final big thanks goes to all my fellow greeks who support me with their love! You guys rock! A special mention also goes to @rouketas and @skapaneas for bringing us all together and @ruth-girl for making me the avatar below!