Imposter

Most years the pond-water microscopy practical throws up an exciting ciliate (or two, or three), but this year, the only ones we saw were duplicates, or too bloody fast to photograph. Ho hum.

So this year you’ll have to make do with an imposter. It’s still got cilia, but it is not a ciliate, and although it’s no bigger than a single-celled organism, it is in fact a full-blown multicellular animal:

Euchlanis rotifer [CC-BY-SA-3.0]

Euchlanis rotifer

This is a rotifer (‘wheel animal’), which are famous for two things: being ridiculously small, and – in one infamous subgroup – being ridiculously averse to having sex. They’re also really cute when they turn on their feeding wheels. Happy New Year.

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