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Ctenophores! And... poop? by zed8

So an interesting thing was revealed quite recently about ctenophores, also called Comb Jellies. The interesting revelation isn't something "typically" interesting in and of itself, but more because it's taken so long for this phenomenon to be observed.
After around 140 years of knowledge and half-assed study of Comb Jellies, it has only NOW (in the past month) been revealed that YES, THEY DO INFACT POOP. Over a century of observation and only now has someone realized that a Comb Jelly's gut has a separate exit from it's entrance.
Many people would think this should be obvious, but it has been assumed that like almost every other Jelly species, there is only ONE orifice to ingest and egest material from (alternating roles, not simultaneous). Needless to say, biology of strange animals can be strange indeed. But if it took over a century for someone to actually confirm the digestive working of a transparent sea creature, imagine how many other mysteries and facts we don't yet know about the world around us!
We constantly discover new species in unexpected places, and yet we apparently don't even know some pretty basic facts about other "well-known" animals.

TL;DR: These things
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTFskdKVNs4
make poo:
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016.....ary-biologists
Think about it.

Ctenophores! And... poop?

zed8

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