AUGUST 17, 2015
by Chuck Bednar
Not only is the flying spaghetti monster the deity of its own satirical church, but it appears to be a real live creature, as workers at petroleum giant BP recently videotaped one while collecting video footage in the waters off the coast of Angola.
According to Discovery News and Live Science reports, the creatures was filmed by a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) that was collecting footage at depths of nearly 4,000 feet (or 1,220 meters). The creature resembled “a bowl of noodles turned upside down underwater,” thus leading the oil and gas workers to name it in honor of the flying spaghetti monster.
The creature was later identified as a siphonophore, a group of animals that includes corals and jellyfish, by researchers at the at the UK’s National Oceanography Centre. Named B. conifer, it is a colonial animal made up of several different multicellular organisms called zooids.
As the websites explain, zooids attach to other zooids to form more complex organisms. Once a zooid is developed from a fertilized egg, others bud from it until an entire animal is formed. Each of these creatures has a job to do, and in the case of B. conifer, not all of the creatures catch and eat food, and only some reproduce, but combined they ensure mutual survival.
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