Brolic
High Value Poster
They're tiny, blobby, butt-shaped, and glow in the dark. What the heck are they? Scientists are still figuring them out.
When experts from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute piloted a remotely operated submersible to depths between 2,700 and 7,200 feet off the coast of California. It was there, in the lightless Midnight Zone, named for fact that no surface light reaches these depths, where they came face to face with a translucent, pink blob about the size of a hazelnut.
Viewed from one side, the creature seemed to be composed of two distinct lobes—or maybe cheeks would be more accurate.
In any event, the more all the scientists gawked at the blob floating in the water column, the more they seemed to settle on a descriptor.
“Someone commented, ‘It looks like a pig’s butt,’ and everybody laughed and agreed,” says Robison. “Everybody liked it so much that when we got around to naming it, there wasn’t much question that, if we could get away with it, we were going to call it ‘pig butt’ in Latin.”
While the name was already sorted, the scientists still had to determine what the porcine orb actually was. And while scientists have made strides in figuring that out, plenty of mystery still endures to this day.
When experts from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute piloted a remotely operated submersible to depths between 2,700 and 7,200 feet off the coast of California. It was there, in the lightless Midnight Zone, named for fact that no surface light reaches these depths, where they came face to face with a translucent, pink blob about the size of a hazelnut.
Viewed from one side, the creature seemed to be composed of two distinct lobes—or maybe cheeks would be more accurate.
“Someone commented, ‘It looks like a pig’s butt,’ and everybody laughed and agreed,” says Robison. “Everybody liked it so much that when we got around to naming it, there wasn’t much question that, if we could get away with it, we were going to call it ‘pig butt’ in Latin.”
While the name was already sorted, the scientists still had to determine what the porcine orb actually was. And while scientists have made strides in figuring that out, plenty of mystery still endures to this day.
