What is it?

Okay, identify this thing. If you’ve already seen it today, you can’t guess.

You get no prizes except for my warm approbation.

Answer tomorrow.

77 Comments

  1. Somite
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 3:19 pm | Permalink

    Tardigrade?

  2. Gabriela Palomo
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 3:21 pm | Permalink

    Is it an Onychophora?

  3. Posted February 21, 2012 at 3:22 pm | Permalink

    William Lane Craig, the morning after the night before?

    • Woof
      Posted February 21, 2012 at 4:15 pm | Permalink

      The likeness is astounding!

  4. Philip
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 3:23 pm | Permalink

    Me, after the Sunday parades in New Orleans.

  5. Rob
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 3:24 pm | Permalink

    Embryonic Pepe doing a practice spit take

  6. Stevoe
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 3:25 pm | Permalink

    The head lice going around my daughter’s school?

    • Lynn Wilhelm
      Posted February 21, 2012 at 9:03 pm | Permalink

      Hah! My daughter’s too.

  7. Posted February 21, 2012 at 3:25 pm | Permalink

    The stuff my nightmares are made of.

  8. Keith
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 3:25 pm | Permalink

    I’m going with something in the Platyhelminthes phylum.

  9. phil loubere
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 3:26 pm | Permalink

    The most recent addition to the muppet show?

  10. NewEnglandBob
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 3:26 pm | Permalink

    Sesame Street gone wild?

  11. Flo M
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 3:27 pm | Permalink

    A polychaete Annelid

    • ChasCPeterson
      Posted February 21, 2012 at 3:32 pm | Permalink

      da winna

      • Posted February 21, 2012 at 3:49 pm | Permalink

        Indeed. Nice ID when one of the definitive features, the chaetae, are hard to see in that image.

  12. Stan Pak
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 3:28 pm | Permalink

    Atheist in the eyes of firm believer?

  13. Pray Hard
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 3:30 pm | Permalink

    No, but I think I saw it on SyFy last night.

  14. ChasCPeterson
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 3:31 pm | Permalink

    I just showed my freshmen a gallery of such mugs last week, so I know the answer but will recuse myself. Can I leave a hint?

    It’s not an ecdysozoan.

  15. Posted February 21, 2012 at 3:33 pm | Permalink

    God; I know, He told me so!

  16. S A GOULD
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 3:34 pm | Permalink

    an evil muppet.

  17. Fred Wollam
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 3:47 pm | Permalink

    The “blast” end of a Blast-End Skrewt.

  18. Posted February 21, 2012 at 3:49 pm | Permalink

    My Ex

  19. blitz442
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 3:52 pm | Permalink

    Nancy Grace without her makeup?

  20. ZenDruid
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 3:56 pm | Permalink

    Alitta succinea…?

  21. Sili
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 4:08 pm | Permalink

    An electron microphotograph (false colour, obviously).

    • Chris Granger
      Posted February 21, 2012 at 6:40 pm | Permalink

      Well played. ;)

  22. Posted February 21, 2012 at 4:16 pm | Permalink

    Forget what it is – how do we kill it?

    • Hempenstein
      Posted February 21, 2012 at 4:49 pm | Permalink

      +1

      • Ken Howard
        Posted February 21, 2012 at 6:47 pm | Permalink

        No no let’s not kill it rather can we let go free in Washington DC?

  23. Quidam
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 4:33 pm | Permalink

    Looks very like this annelid ventworm nereis Sp

    http://www.serpentproject.com/assets/images/image%20comp%203/image%20comp%203.swf

  24. Posted February 21, 2012 at 4:33 pm | Permalink

    The sockety spiky things suggested echinoderm, so I at first wondered about some aberrant worm-like holothurian. But holothurians don’t have eyes. These ones look like primitive COMPOUND eyes, so I next thought polychaete, which is my final bet – but not a very confident one. Whatever it is, it is amazing. Isn’t evolution wonderful.

    • Keith
      Posted February 21, 2012 at 5:40 pm | Permalink

      Are you sure those are eyes? They look like some sort of chemical (rather than electromagnetic) detectors.

    • Posted February 21, 2012 at 10:16 pm | Permalink

      The Intelligent Designer definitely has problems working after indulging in the Communion wine.

    • ChasCPeterson
      Posted February 22, 2012 at 12:55 am | Permalink

      ?
      Why would you expect primitive compound eyes in annelids?

      • Filipe
        Posted February 22, 2012 at 2:02 am | Permalink

        By analogy with similar photos of Nereis specimens I have around here (they have cool jaws this guy doesn’t have) what appear to be «eyes» are articulated palps with tiny sensory cillia.

  25. neil
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 4:37 pm | Permalink

    I dunno, but coming soon to a 3D theater near you.

  26. sasqwatch
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 4:40 pm | Permalink

    Either it’s a latest creation of The Muppets Studio, or perhaps the head of a tick?

    • sasqwatch
      Posted February 21, 2012 at 4:44 pm | Permalink

      Am cracking up that I appear to be the third person to see a muppet.

      • Posted February 21, 2012 at 5:04 pm | Permalink

        ’Twas my first thought, too!

        /@

  27. still learning
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 4:52 pm | Permalink

    A newly-discovered sketch by S. Dali?

    • DocAtheist
      Posted February 21, 2012 at 8:13 pm | Permalink

      Nope: No drawers and not enough knees.

  28. Posted February 21, 2012 at 5:08 pm | Permalink

    OT: Isn’t that a wonderfully minimalist Google doodle?

    /@

    • Posted February 21, 2012 at 5:16 pm | Permalink

      Hmm… although it’s not properly sinusoidal… I’m going to have to claw some points back, Google.

      /@

  29. Papalinton
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 5:14 pm | Permalink

    It’s a rubber hand puppet.

  30. Ben JSM
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 5:36 pm | Permalink

    It’s clearly the googley-eyed Lord Christopher The Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley without his wig.

  31. Posted February 21, 2012 at 5:45 pm | Permalink

    A polychaete of course.

  32. Vimalakirtri
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 5:48 pm | Permalink

    Beautiful?

    • yvrous
      Posted February 21, 2012 at 8:04 pm | Permalink

      Not so beautiful when they take residence under your toe nail.

  33. R.W.
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 6:12 pm | Permalink

    Mother Teresa’s chest.

  34. Utakata
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 6:23 pm | Permalink

    I don’t think it’s a cat.

  35. Curtis
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 6:53 pm | Permalink

    A Sandworm from Arrakis?

    • Dale
      Posted February 21, 2012 at 8:55 pm | Permalink

      You got it. Amazing. I would gather that the “eyes” don’t process a lot of optical data.

  36. Gerard26
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 7:14 pm | Permalink

    I’m not sure but it remainds me of Rick Santorum.

    • Dale
      Posted February 21, 2012 at 9:46 pm | Permalink

      So which worm are you insulting? ;-)

  37. Dawn Oz
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 7:25 pm | Permalink

    It could be the early foetal stage of something.

  38. David
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 7:28 pm | Permalink

    Rick Santorum?

    • David
      Posted February 21, 2012 at 7:29 pm | Permalink

      Looks like I wasn’t the only one to notice the resemblance.

  39. Llwddythlw
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 7:38 pm | Permalink

    A new species from Lake Vostok?

  40. Jonas
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 7:39 pm | Permalink

    Ogdu hem?

  41. DocAtheist
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 8:15 pm | Permalink

    My first thought was an underwater worm, and my second was the sandworm from the movie Beetlejuice. Nice eyes!

  42. yvrous
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 8:28 pm | Permalink

    Ijust ask Adam Lusher: it’s Dawkins’s ancestor!

  43. H.H.
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 9:44 pm | Permalink

    All my research points to it being a Martian Popping Thing.

  44. DV
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 10:46 pm | Permalink

    Quidam got it I think.

    Follow-up question: was this produced by natural selection or by genetic drift?

  45. J.J.E.
    Posted February 21, 2012 at 11:32 pm | Permalink

    An arthropod’s penis. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

  46. Diane G.
    Posted February 22, 2012 at 1:08 am | Permalink

    I was gonna guess polychaete before I read any of the already tendered guesses. Honest!

  47. C D Ward
    Posted February 22, 2012 at 2:32 am | Permalink

    Ia Ia Cthulhu fhtagn!

  48. Pete UK
    Posted February 22, 2012 at 2:35 am | Permalink

    Just got it: Angelina Jolie standing on her head.

  49. Dominic
    Posted February 22, 2012 at 2:35 am | Permalink

    What function might the hairs have? Anchoring it after burrowing into something? I would say Demodex folliculorum as they are my favourite mites, but suppose them to be smaller…

  50. Alice Shortcake
    Posted February 22, 2012 at 2:44 am | Permalink

    One of Madonna’s old bras?

  51. Jack BENTLEY
    Posted February 22, 2012 at 2:59 am | Permalink

    There is a distinct resemblance to my former father-in-law

  52. Pensnest
    Posted February 22, 2012 at 3:17 am | Permalink

    FSM-inspired sex toy.

  53. Fergus Gallagher
    Posted February 22, 2012 at 3:40 am | Permalink

    Google Image Search win.

  54. michael
    Posted February 22, 2012 at 8:41 am | Permalink

    V. Gov. Bob McDonnell


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