Pyura Chilensis: Strange sea creature outside looks like "Living Rock" but inside a delicacy in Chile
This rock is actually a bizarre creature- that can breed with itself. From the outside it looks like a grey stone, but if you cut it open there is a mass of blood-red hermaphrodites living inside.
The living rock is basically a mass of organs surrounded by a layer of skin and muscle.
If you stepped on it you would get a shock as it would burst open and spill the strange creatures, that are considered a delicacy in Central America.
Lurking off the coast of Chile and Peru, the creepy creature is called Pyura chilensis – also known as Piure- in Spanish.
It belongs to a group of sac-like marine life known as sea squirts. The bizarre animal cannot move and feeds by filtering in seawater and consuming the tiny algae before exhaling it back into the sea.
The Pyura chilensis can also mate with itself. It’s born male, becomes hermaphroditic at puberty, and reproduces by tossing clouds of sperm and eggs into the surrounding water in the hope that they will collide.
The Piure is known as a tunicate, so-called because it is covered in a layer or 'tunic' - of animal cellulose called tunicin.
If they come together they form a 'fertile cloud' which will produce tiny tadpole-like offspring.
Chileans eat the blobby animal raw or in stews and it has been described as tasting “bitter”, “soapy” and with an “iodine flavour".
The grey bit around the creatures is actually made up of vanadium – a hard, silvery grey metal that occurs naturally in more than 60 different minerals around the world. Weirdly it is also the element used to make alloy steels.
Because of its high level of vanadium and the element's toxicity, there are concerns about eating the creature.
This flesh is canned or sold as strips and can be eaten raw, or cooked. It is also exported to Sweden and Japan.
Music : Intrepid by Kevin MacLeod
Source : DailyStar , Wikipedia , DailyMail , Dobriiden
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