First, there were “Frankenstein rabbits,” and now there are “cursed gummy bears.”
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) shared a quirky reminder on Facebook about the unusual things that can be found living in U.S. lakes. On August 17, the agency posted a photo showing what looked like a large, gelatinous ball of goo.
But don’t be fooled—there’s more to it than meets the eye.
“Cursed Gummy Bear? Nope, just a magnificent bryozoan doing its thing,” USFWS captioned the post.
The agency explained that what might appear to be “a gummy, a pile of frog eggs, a mutant brain, or a sci-fi nightmare” is actually a colony of tiny, filter-feeding creatures called zooids.
One bryozoan blob contains thousands of zooids “working together in harmony.”
The colony featured in the USFWS post was recently spotted in Michigan’s Lake Huron, though these organisms have existed on Earth far longer than a few weeks. According to the USFWS, bryozoans have been around for over 480 million years.
“These ancient creatures breathe life into freshwater, capturing plankton and cleaning the water as they drift in slow-moving rivers and lakes. Some colonies grow over a foot wide, pulsing gently with the current—a secret world hidden in plain sight,” the agency wrote.
If you happen to see one of these blobs floating in a lake or river, it’s best to leave it alone so the bryozoan colony can continue its work purifying the water.
Bryozoans are more visible in warmer months. As temperatures drop, they produce statoblasts—microscopic survival pods that can withstand freezing, drying, and even the passage of time. When conditions improve, these statoblasts awaken, forming new colonies and continuing the cycle that has persisted for hundreds of millions of years.
The USFWS concluded its post by noting that magnificent bryozoans are among the most common bryozoans in the U.S., though there are thousands of species worldwide.
