A Sea Biscuit’s Life

Hi all — We’re still in the process of moving the blog over to its new server (remember, if the feed dies, just come back to theartfulamoeba.com and hit the button in the upper right corner), so I probably won’t be able to crank out a proper post until this weekend. Also, at this point, I’m not even sure this post will make it over since we’ve already copied the files.

So until then, enjoy this beautiful film documenting the life of the real sea biscuit, a sand dollar relative in the echinoderms — the starfish, sea urchins and friends, who along with the hemichordates are the most closely-related animal group to the vertebrates, as we are all deuterostomes. Notice also that although the adults are radially symmetrical (star-shaped), the larvae are bilaterally symmetrical (mirror-image symmetry) like us.

The thick vitelline envelope forms immediately after fertilization to prevent the disaster of *two* sperm fertilizing an egg (three copies of chromosomes in animals = bad. Plants have their own ideas on the subject). It’s also amazing how you can see the nuclei actually migrating towards each other and fusing. And their little larvae are just so darn cute. They look just like Darth Vader helmets, and then moon landers! Awwww. And who would have guessed a sea biscuit’s life would involve such a peppy soundtrack?

The Aristotle’s lantern, by the way, is the five-toothed chewing organ, so name by the great Greek scientist and teacher of Alexander the Great, Aristotle. Who, in addition to being one of the most amazing philosophers of all time was also the world’s first marine biologist. For real!

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