From
http://www.msnbc.com/news/774303.asp?0bl=-0
LITTLE MONSTERS
Each time your foot
sinks into the sand, you’re
squashing perhaps 30,000
animals. They’d scare your pants
off—if only you could see
them. Many look like worms or
shrimp, but most resemble
nothing else on this planet. Tiny
Loricifera has two legs, a
hairy mouth and a springlike body.
It hides in its shell until a
bacterium wanders by, then pops up
and snatches it. Tardigrade,
also called “water bear,” has
eight legs and sticky pads
that cling to dead plants in the
sand.
These beasts, called
meiofauna, are the smallest of
multicellular organisms,
about the size of a (single-celled)
ameba. They live anywhere
there’s sand and water.
Amazingly, there are as many
different species of
meiofauna—about 3 million—as
of all other earthly creatures
combined, says biologist Paul
Montagne of the University of
Texas. Scientists suspect the
creatures form a crucial link in
the food chain, but they’re
only beginning to find out what
that might be, and why there
are so many different kinds.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/774303.asp?0bl=-0
LITTLE MONSTERS
Each time your foot
sinks into the sand, you’re
squashing perhaps 30,000
animals. They’d scare your pants
off—if only you could see
them. Many look like worms or
shrimp, but most resemble
nothing else on this planet. Tiny
Loricifera has two legs, a
hairy mouth and a springlike body.
It hides in its shell until a
bacterium wanders by, then pops up
and snatches it. Tardigrade,
also called “water bear,” has
eight legs and sticky pads
that cling to dead plants in the
sand.
These beasts, called
meiofauna, are the smallest of
multicellular organisms,
about the size of a (single-celled)
ameba. They live anywhere
there’s sand and water.
Amazingly, there are as many
different species of
meiofauna—about 3 million—as
of all other earthly creatures
combined, says biologist Paul
Montagne of the University of
Texas. Scientists suspect the
creatures form a crucial link in
the food chain, but they’re
only beginning to find out what
that might be, and why there
are so many different kinds.
