{"id":183476,"date":"2025-12-14T01:22:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T01:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/183476\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T01:22:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T01:22:08","slug":"meat-eating-death-ball-sponges-sciencealert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/183476\/","title":{"rendered":"Meat-Eating ‘Death-Ball’ Sponges : ScienceAlert"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sponges are some of the simplest<\/a> and least dangerous animals on Earth, but a new species seems to be shooting for a cooler reputation.<\/p>\n

A carnivorous “death-ball” sponge is among 30 new creatures found in the deep sea near Antarctica earlier this year by the Nippon Foundation\u2013Nekton Ocean Census.<\/p>\n

The new species has been placed in the genus Chondrocladia<\/a>, known as the ping pong ball sponges. It’s easy to see why at a glance: These creatures look like a bunch of bubbles stuck together on sticks.<\/p>\n

But even that benign appearance is hiding their true nature. These sponges are covered in tiny hooks<\/a> that capture small prey, likely crustaceans, that swim past. At least they don’t feast on fossils<\/a>, like other recently discovered sponges.<\/p>\n

Related: Stunning New Video Reveals Deepest-Known Undersea Life Forms<\/a><\/p>\n

Launched in 2023, the Nippon Foundation\u2013Nekton Ocean Census is an initiative to catalog as-yet unknown creatures that live in the rarely studied Southern Ocean.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, the Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) SuBastian spotted these death-ball sponges at a depth of 3,601 meters (11,814 feet), in a trench east of Montagu Island<\/a>, which is part of one of the most remote island chains on Earth.<\/p>\n

They weren’t the only new critters found, either. The expedition also uncovered new species of scale worms covered in iridescent armor, as well as new crustaceans and sea stars.<\/p>\n

\"MeetThe new species of iridescent scale worm discovered during the expedition. (The Nippon Foundation-Nekton Ocean Census\/Schmidt Ocean Institute \u00a9 2025<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Other highlights of the mission include capturing the first-ever video of a juvenile colossal squid<\/a>, and being the first to explore a brand new ecosystem<\/a> hidden under a gigantic iceberg that calved off from a glacier in West Antarctica.<\/p>\n

The expedition may be over, but the data analysis is just beginning, the team says.<\/p>\n

“The Southern Ocean remains profoundly under-sampled,” says<\/a> Michelle Taylor, Head of Science at the Ocean Census.<\/p>\n

“To date, we have only assessed under 30 percent of the samples collected from this expedition, so confirming 30 new species already shows how much biodiversity is still undocumented.”<\/p>\n

\"Subscribe<\/a><\/p>\n

That unknown biodiversity has been hinted at<\/a> many times in recent years.<\/p>\n

It seems like every time scientists peer into the depths of the oceans<\/a>, eerie new creatures emerge, from strangely spiky crabs<\/a> to adorable fish<\/a> that look like they’re vying for a spot in your Animal Crossing village.<\/p>\n

All confirmed species from the Ocean Census will be curated in an open-access data platform<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sponges are some of the simplest and least dangerous animals on Earth, but a new species seems to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":183477,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[85,46,371,141,386],"class_list":{"0":"post-183476","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-msft-content","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}