We come acrossa lotofbizarreanimals here at IFLScience and the one we acquaint to you today is no unlike – but you ’d emphatically be forgiven for thinking it was a sign of an exotic encroachment if you came across one . What on Earth ( literally ) are we on about , we hear you expect ? Bryozoans , of course .

Surprisingly , for something the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservationdescribedas wait “ like Walmart eccentric bags of Orbeezs that have been soaked in rain a puddle , ” bryozoans are very much alive and are – though it might be laborious to conceive just looking at them – animals .

ⓘ IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from international sites .

Found across every continent except Antarctica , there ’s think to be over 4,000 species within the phylumBryozoa , of which the vast legal age live in marine environments – out of those witness in North America , only 24 are known to live in freshwater .

It ’s the freshwater ones that be given to look like those massive gelatinous blobs , often found attach to rocks and Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree branches . However , what we see as an alien egg - esque lump is n’t actually a single moss animal , but a settlement of thousands of clones ; these most often start toformin the natural spring , peaking inlate summerand descent , before give way off get the winter .

Though a mass of clones vocalize like something out of a sci - fi motion picture , it ’s just asexual reproduction . The mortal this cloning procedure bring forth are calledzooids , which are commonly only around 0.8 millimeters ( 1/32nd of an inch ) long .

zooid have fairly simple bodies , with a single possible action that act as a mouth andanus(sounds double-dyed , but not unusual in the brute kingdom ) , and a slew of organs known as a polypide . They also look like they have a head , but this is actually a U - shape , tentacled feeding structure know as a lophophore , which filters food out from the smother urine , such as zooplankton and algae .

That filter - alimentation is one of the reasons why blobbybryozoanstend to be considered helpful rather than harmful . “ These beast are an important part of the ecosystem because they help clean the H2O and serve as quarry for mussel , snails , and even small fish , ” wrote the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation onX. They might also even help to improve water clarity , with their green colour mayhap assign to the algae they take in .

Not a bad daytime ’s work for a animal that eats out of its ass .