‘Alien’-like sea salps wash ashore on a Tasmanian beach as online users wonder what they are
Mysterious jelly-like ‘aliens’ washed up on an Australian beach spark intense speculation about what they are
- ‘Alien’-like animals found on a Tasmanian beach
- The animals, marine alps, are 95 percent water
- They are strangely more related to humans than jellyfish
An ‘alien’-looking creature has caused a stir online after bunches of the blob-like creatures washed up on a beach.
Tasmanian resident Julie found the strange aquatic creatures while walking along her local beach on Sunday and posted images to the Facebook group Field Naturalists (of) Tasmania to help identify the animals.
The largely translucent, cylindrical animals with bright red orbs on one side were scattered on the beach, sparking online curiosity as to what they were before they were identified.
Groups of aliens were spotted by a local resident when they washed up on a beach in Tasmania
Although they appear to be a type of jellyfish, the animals, Sea Salps, are more closely related to vertebrates such as humans, according to the Australian Museum.
The animals are known to grow faster than any other multicellular creature up to 10 cm in length as they alternate between two life cycles, sexual and asexual.
The animals are usually solitary during their asexual phase, feeding on phytoplankton and algae passing through their feeding tube.
Julie’s images, however, show the salps in their breeding process, where a single salpen can create hundreds of clones in a connected bundle.
Each clone takes only about 48 hours to mature and increases in size about 10 percent every hour.
This allows the animals to quickly take advantage of high food sources such as algal blooms.
The animal was identified as a sea salp, a strange creature that is mind-bogglingly more closely related to vertebrates like humans than to jellyfish
Images of the salps show it in the brooding stage where a single salp can make up to hundreds of clones in a single colony before splitting up when food becomes scarce
Salps inhabit most of the oceans, but are most commonly found in southern waters, as they can propel themselves using one of the most efficient jet propulsion methods in the animal kingdom.
They swim by producing a jet from a rear-facing siphon and filling it with water from a forward-facing siphon, forcing them to accelerate and decelerate rapidly.
However, in a colony, Salps will time their propulsion to maintain forward momentum and minimize lag.
The animals also play a fairly critical role to the environments they live in, as they can limit algal blooms that can destroy aquatic habitats.
They are also a food source for low-energy aquatic animals such as turtles and fish, as they are about 95 percent water.