• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

This “Sailor’s Eyeball” Blob Is One Of The Largest Single-Celled Organisms On Earth

December 2, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

There are sailors’ eyeballs to be found at sea, that is, if you know where to look. Fortunately not the result of any gouging injuries, these curious blobs are a type of algae called Valonia ventricosa, and they’re one of the largest single-celled organisms on Earth.

The size of sailor’s eyeballs can vary from a speck the size of a pinhead, to, well, an eyeball. Just how big the blob gets all comes down to the contents of its vacuole – the space inside its cell wall. 

Advertisement

You see, V. ventricosa is unicellular, but it can contain the nuclei of many cells. This is because they’re coenocytic organisms, meaning they’re made up of a mass of cytoplasm containing many cell nuclei that aren’t separated by a cell wall. 

The unusual arrangement comes with a fun party trick. If you pop a sailor’s eyeball – the algal version, please – it can actually result in more V. ventricosa springing up as they only need one cell nucleus to grow into new organisms, reports Science Alert.

sailor’s eyeball alga, Valonia ventricosa

Very silvery indeed.

And hoo boy, are they poppable. The sometimes-vast cytoplasm vacuole contains nuclei organized in lobes that radiate from its center, creating an internal anatomy the New Heaven Reef Conservation Program describes as “something like a Tesla plasma ball”.

Sailors’ eyeballs are often spotted by divers drifting through coral reefs in tropical and subtropical regions of the world’s oceans. They can vary in color from bright green to black, and sometimes very silvery because of the unique structure of their cell walls’ cellulose crystals.  

Advertisement

The shimmering coloration is reminiscent of the NOAA Ocean Exploration’s “golden egg” mystery when they found an alien-like shiny orb on the seabed of Alaska. The shiny blob was spotted at a depth of 3.1 kilometers (2 miles), anchored to a rocky surface. Most curious of all, the mysterious object had a hole in it, inspiring one researcher to say during the live feed, “Something tried to get in… or to get out.”

Sailors’ eyeballs, on the other hand, are just trying to get on with their day, so don’t you go popping those weird jelly blobs now, will you?

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. China Evergrande shares slide 6% in early trade
  2. French watchdog chief calls for ban on ‘payment for order flow’ in EU stock market
  3. Robots Are Performing Hindu Rituals – Some Devotees Fear They’ll Replace Worshippers
  4. Possible Hints Of Life Found On Distant Planet – How Excited Should We Be?

Source Link: This “Sailor’s Eyeball” Blob Is One Of The Largest Single-Celled Organisms On Earth

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Martian Mudstone Has Features That Might Be Biosignatures, New Brain Implant Can Decode Your Internal Monologue, And Much More This Week
  • Crocodiles Weren’t All Blood-Thirsty Killers, Some Evolved To Be Plant-Eating Vegetarians
  • Stratospheric Warming Event May Be Unfolding In The Southern Polar Vortex, Shaking Up Global Weather Systems
  • 15 Years Ago, Bees In Brooklyn Appeared Red After Snacking Where They Shouldn’t
  • Carnian Pluvial Event: It Rained For 2 Million Years — And It Changed Planet Earth Forever
  • There’s Volcanic Unrest At The Campi Flegrei Caldera – Here’s What We Know
  • The “Rumpelstiltskin Effect”: When Just Getting A Diagnosis Is Enough To Start The Healing
  • In 1962, A Boy Found A Radioactive Capsule And Brought It Inside His House — With Tragic Results
  • This Cute Creature Has One Of The Largest Genomes Of Any Mammal, With 114 Chromosomes
  • Little Air And Dramatic Evolutionary Changes Await Future Humans On Mars
  • “Black Hole Stars” Might Solve Unexplained JWST Discovery
  • Pretty In Purple: Why Do Some Otters Have Purple Teeth And Bones? It’s All Down To Their Spiky Diets
  • The World’s Largest Carnivoran Is A 3,600-Kilogram Giant That Weighs More Than Your Car
  • Devastating “Rogue Waves” Finally Have An Explanation
  • Meet The “Masked Seducer”, A Unique Bat With A Never-Before-Seen Courtship Display
  • Alaska’s Salmon River Is Turning Orange – And It’s A Stark Warning
  • Meet The Heaviest Jelly In The Seas, Weighing Over Twice As Much As A Grand Piano
  • For The First Time, We’ve Found Evidence Climate Change Is Attracting Invasive Species To Canadian Arctic
  • What Are Microfiber Cloths, And How Do They Clean So Well?
  • Stowaway Rat That Hopped On A Flight From Miami Was A “Wake-Up Call” For Global Health
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version