What is it?

[Larv]

YouTube - Unknown Lifeform in North Carolina...

[InfiniteNow]

A biologist at the University of Minnesota seems to think the suggestion that it is a colony of either tubifex worms or bryozoans sounds reasonable.

And, according to this story, they've confirmed the tubifex worms hypothesis.


Here's the wiki on those things: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tubifex_tubifex

[Larv]

Originally Posted by InfiniteNow

A biologist at the University of Minnesota seems to think the suggestion that it is a colony of either tubifex worms or bryozoans sounds reasonable.

And, according to this story, they've confirmed the tubifex worms hypothesis.


Here's the wiki on those things: Tubifex tubifex - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I just spotted it today on youtube, so it may be old news. I like the tubifix hypothesis; didn't know that bryozoans were as mobile. Like everyone else, I suppose, I had to recall that old sci-fi movie "The Blob". I think it came out of the sewers.

[lemit]

I'm not sure what it is. Maybe there are some medical people around here who can tell me.

But first I have to ask: is this a joke that everybody else is in on? Is this some kind of initiation everybody has to go through? I don't like being left out, being laughed at, so please let me know.

Nobody? Well, I guess I'm just going to have to assume there might be somebody else who didn't get the message.

I don't care how it's labelled. That isn't a sewer, unless the sewers in North Carolina have a habit of moving. I'm pretty sure that if we took Occam's razor to it, it would bleed. That's because the video is a scope of some internal organ. That's where I want help from somebody medical. I thought at first it was a scope of colon polyps, but the proportions and the scale didn't seem right, so I don't know.

The only thing I can say definitely about the video is that the only relationship it has to a sewer is if it really is a colonoscopy.

--lemit

[Mercedes Benzene]

Originally Posted by lemit

The only thing I can say definitely about the video is that the only relationship it has to a sewer is if it really is a colonoscopy.

It looks like a sewer to me. Look at > :34
You can see that it's a segmented pipe. It's not an internal organ. It's definitely suburban infrastructure.

[Moontanman]

Tubifex worms no doubt, bryozoans require too much oxygen to grow under those conditions into large colonies. I found a large colony of bryozoans a few days ago in a lake spillway, they do not move to the naked eye. I feed my fish tubifex and black worms, they often appear to be a larger organism at first glance.

[Larv]

I didn't know that tubufex worms massed up like that, appearing to be members of a colony with a slimy protective coating. The lateral extensions move with the main mass, almost like tentacles of a single organism. Bryozoans that I know about don't move like that.

[Moontanman]

Larv, you are correct Bryozoans do not appear to move at all to the naked eye. But this is indeed tubifex worms, the worms are less than 1mm thick often more hair like and they do indeed move in mass in response to stimuli, especially the heat from the light source. the film does not have the resolution to show the worms as individuals that why they seem to be a film instead of a moving mass of worms. I've seen tubifex worms in large masses and they do indeed look like a large ball of slime, only separating out as individual when you look closely or the worms fatten up as they shorten their length.

Either that or we are being invaded by excrement eating aliens who are coming to get us through our toilets....

[hallenrm]

I think the readers of this thread may like to go through a thread in a similar issue, the thread is entitled Floating stones in Ram setu. It is about the so called floating stones that were similarly reported for an ancient bridge between Rameshwaram in India and Sri Lanka.

[stereologist]

These certainly are not floating stones.