Solutions to bit-o-critter 9, 10 and 11
Hi all,
I got a bit behind while I was in NY, but am back on deck today and will be back to posting a bit more regularly. Here's the solutions to the recent bit-o-critters.
Round 9 - Six-gilled shark, Hexanchus griseus
A big ol' slug of a shark, most common in the colder waters of the world. I picked it because it always seemed odd to me that six and seven gilled sharks manage to have one or two more than everyone else. Five seems kind of a fundamental number for gills.
Round 11 - Loriciferan. OK, that was just mean. A truly obscure group of microscopic invertebrates that live between sand grains on the bottom of the ocean. A phylum unto themselves, they were only discovered in 1983. Not much to them except the lorica or house (the clear baggy bit on the right), some somatic and reproductive cells (pink) and the ring of tentacles around the oral cone (on the left).