Mystery protozoan? Like a balloon floating through the water

[Bruce Williams]

Hi folks,

Could be that this is a fairly common lil' critter and it's just that I've not seen one before. Having failed miserably to track it down on the web, I am hoping that one of you will point me in the right direction.

*UPDATE* Ken Ramos has identified my balloon creature as Trachelius ovum, 200-400um.

It's quite a large animal as protozoa go - as big as say....one of the larger rotifers maybe.

Here's a still from the video. The animal is like a short, fat, transparent balloon and it floats very much like a balloon does when there is just the slightest breeze. The WMV video is unfortunately rather low quality due to need to keep the size down. It does however convey the "feel" of the animal much better than my stills. The link for the video (4 megabyte) follows the photo.





Here's the link for the video:

http://www.tal-handaq.co.uk/unknown_prot.html

Please let me know if you have any problem running this vid (should run in Windows Media Player).

*UPDATE* Please also see my later posting in this thread.

Bruce

[Ken Ramos]

I would venture to say, what you have here is Trachelius ovum, 200-400um.

[Bruce Williams]

Thanks Ken - I'm off to find out more about it the on the web - Bruce

[Bruce Williams]

*UPDATE*

I have just uploaded a larger, higher quality version of the video for anyone who might be interested. It's in DivX format and weighs in at around 7.5 megabytes. If the initial play during download is a bit jumpy I suggest you play it a second time (using the player controls) after download is complete.

Bruce

Here's the link to play the video:

http://www.tal-handaq.co.uk/unknown_prot_d.html

[bernhardinho]

Hi Bruce,

Jesus, that's a lovely video. I support Ken there, it is Trachelius ovum, alive and kicking, no doubt about this.

See you

Bernhard