World’s Most Beautiful Sponge Dismantles Its Victims Cell by Cell: Death on this sponge will not be a pleasant one. As the catch struggles to free itself, over the course of 10 to 24 hours the cells on the sponge’s branch crawl up onto the critter. There’s no biting, and there are no toxins involved. The prey is simply immobilized and subsumed right into the sponge. “So it eventually ends up as a little pocket, what we call a prey cyst,” said Reiswig. “And then once the prey dies in there, the cells around it migrate into any little opening—through the mouth, through the nose, through whatever openings there are between the skeleton, and starts to dismantle the cells of the copepod or small crustacean. Insidious!”
Posted on: Sun, 29 Jun 2014 04:04:38 +0000
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