- The luminous blob was removed from the water by volunteers in Utrecht
A mysterious glowing orange blob has been pulled from a canal in the Netherlands – with baffled local ecologists labeling it as ‘bizarre’.
Photos show the enormous alien bag after it was pulled from the water by volunteers in Utrecht.
“This was hanging at the bottom of a floating island,” the group said of the unusual discovery made earlier this month.
They revealed that the strange entity was in fact composed of animals known as water sac bryozoans, which group together in colonies.
‘The big bag is formed by several animals together. At a certain point they form a colony and several colonies can then stick together again,’ says urban ecologist Anne Nijs.
Photos show the enormous alien bag after it was pulled from the water by volunteers in Utrecht
‘A bag can have a diameter of two meters. The bag then attaches itself to something,” she explained.
She added that the find is particularly surprising because the hermaphroditic creatures are not native to Utrecht and are considered ‘exotics’.
‘It is the first time they have been discovered here. So it is a very special story,” Nijs told the Dutch news site ADVERTISEMENT.
“But luckily they don’t harm the environment here,” she added.
The harmless nature of the aquatic creatures means it was safe to return the bag to where it was found under the islet.
They are believed to have originated from the east coast of the US and were first found in Europe in Germany in 1883.
The species has been found throughout Western Europe since the 1990s and is spreading ‘rapidly’, according to Nijs.
Large clumps of the microorganisms were observed in Oklahoma’s McGee Creek Reservoir during the summer.
Images of the bizarre sightings in Oklahoma over the summer surfaced online, showing large, jelly-like balls with a hard exterior hanging from submerged tree branches
Some feared the strange jelly-like balls could be dangerous, while conspiracy theories were also reportedly circulating that they were ‘alien egg cartons’.
Officials intervened to reassure locals. Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation (ODWC) shared a photo of them on Facebook and wrote, “These are Bryozoans, and they will likely appear in large numbers this summer.
‘Don’t worry: these microorganisms are indigenous and pose no danger to you or nature.’
Bryozoans are small animals, no larger than four millimeters, that form colonies of numerous interconnected units called zooids.
They are invertebrates and have male and female reproductive organs, meaning they can clone themselves.
They feed primarily on bacteria and phytoplankton found in water, and their fossil record shows evidence of this as far back as 500 million years ago.