An “extremely toxic” creature that looks like an “alien” has washed up on a beach in Australia.
The beast was photographed at Batemans Bay in New South Wales by Mrs Cassar, who withheld her first name. She explained how her five-year-old son found it in the shallows and was playing with it on his boogie board.
“They were tubular organisms that were mostly a blue colour, and each tube seemed to be a singular organism but they were all bunched together and attached to a rock,” she said.
“I thought maybe it was appearing differently to what it normally would due to either being dead or out of the water. I didn’t touch it, only the rock it was on. I left it in the water and made sure my son didn’t touch it again.”
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Credit: Cassar/Pen News)
In the snaps, the animal’s mysterious blue appendages are seen splayed out in different directions. Mrs Cassar shared the images with a naturalists’ page on Facebook in a bid to find out what it was.
One person branded it “an alien hair scalp”, while another called it a “nightmare I had just a few nights ago”. Others suggested different types of zoanthid, an order of animal commonly found in coral reefs, living as colonies.
Asked for his assessment, John Veron – a scientist nicknamed ‘The Godfather of Coral’ – agreed the tubes was “weird” and said he had “never seen them before”.
But he suggested it could be Isaurus, a genus of zoanthid. Marine biologist Rosemary Steinberg, who specialises in coral, said it was a part of the animal kingdom that was “notoriously difficult to ID without having the critter right in front of you”.
“But they are definitely a zoantharian,” she added. “I would hazard that they are Zoanthus robustus without seeing them in person.”
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Credit: Cassar/Pen News)
Some viewers on Facebook, believing that Mrs Cassar had touched the animal, expressed their alarm. But Dr Steinberg said the species was only “extremely toxic” in certain circumstances.
She explained: “They aren’t at all dangerous to touch or look at, but don’t eat them, and maybe wash your hands if you touch them before touching your mouth or eyes.
“They are extremely toxic if they are ingested, or if you keep them in aquariums and decide to cut them up to have more colonies, and you get any of their ‘juices’ in your eyes.
“Technically they have stinging cells like jellyfish, but the worst you would get from them is a very mild irritation.
“They usually spend the days with their tentacles in and look like spooky fingers coming out of the sea floor, then they open them at night to look like daisies.”
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