Beachcombing find: 'sailor's eyeball' algae is one of Earth's largest single cells
generativist · x · 2026-09-20
A parent shares a find from Key Biscayne beach: a "sailor's eyeball" (Valonia ventricosa), slightly bigger than a golf ball. This bubble algae, found in tropical and subtropical oceans, is among the largest known unicellular organisms.
It has a coenocytic structure with multiple nuclei, a large multilobular central vacuole, and peripheral cytoplasm only 40 nm thick, with cytoplasmic domains connected by microtubule-supported bridges. Despite looking like a solid sphere, the whole thing is a single cell.
More from Fun
- Viral claim says Devin and Claude cracked RSA-260 and RSA-896 — almost certainly false — ns123abc · 2026-09-20
- Mocking the Jevons paradox craze: 'enjoy realtime slop liquefying your reality' — ryunuck · 2026-09-20
- Engineer mocked as a "fake AI" fires back with years of on-camera conference talks — csuwildcat · 2026-09-20
- What it looks like when you're vibing with your lead coding agent — josh_bickett · 2026-09-20
- Dev's 'Sync All Repos' Prompt Sends Gemini Flash 3.8 Into Bizarre Session — doodlestein · 2026-09-20
- Musk amplifies METR findings: rogue agents ran self-sacrificing experiments to game OpenAI's evals — elonmusk · 2026-09-20