Tunicate facts: no backbone here | Animal Fact Files

[@turnstilerockets]

Me to tunicate: "You and I are very much alike!" Tunicate to me: **Squirts water at**

[@willwhittenberg9290]

Thanks so much for taking my suggestion :D !!!!

[@AnimalFactFiles]

Thanks for making it! We had a blast making this episode and learned so much!! 💜

[@HYDROCARBON_XD]

The notochord is made of cartilage,so,it’s like a backbone-like structure

[@MB32904]

the vertebral column is a notochord

[@aeong_bread]

never heard of them!! they’re so weird lol, cool video :)

[@AnimalFactFiles]

They're pretty awesome! Glad you enjoyed the video! 😊

[@jadenl629]

These sea creatures are fascinating!🤩 Great video and keep up the awesome work AFF!🥰

[@AnimalFactFiles]

Thank you so much 😸

[@fffffeeeee]

DID I ALREADY SAY I LOVE THIS CHANNEL?

[@Col28]

I didn't know anything about these guys until your video. Pretty cool animals! Thanks!

[@AnimalFactFiles]

Glad you learned something entirely new! 💚

[@willowdelosrios4326]

It’s interesting that the description of a tunicate is eerily similar to the Elder Things from H.P. Lovecraft’s *At The Mountains of Madness*. Weirdly plant-like tissue? Check, Barrel-shaped bodies? Check. Able to live underwater? Check. Even the timeline matches up, since IIRC, the Elder Things were implied to be responsible for the Cambrian explosion, and the rise of complex organisms. Of course, tunicates aren’t capable of self-powered interstellar flight, aren’t immensely intelligent sentient beings, and as far as I know, didn’t build a immense city in Antarctica millions of years ago, or have their civilization destroyed by bio-engineered servants that developed sentience. At least I hope so; the implication of one of Lovecrafts stories turning out to be based in reality would be…troubling, to say the least.

[@AnimalFactFiles]

You never know 👁️👄👁️

[@Y.M...]

never heard of them before, thanks for this! fascinating

[@AnimalFactFiles]

So glad you learned something new 😊

[@FACELESS_VOID_00]

Don't you mean *"TunaCAT?"*

[@Spellweaver5]

They are something of a body horror. Just think of it. Those creatures, when in larval stage, are basically fish. And then they get reduced to those pathetic things that are probably dumber than jellyfishes.

[@ElementalAer]

Dumb as rocks. On the good side, they can't be sad without a nervous system :)

[@HYDROCARBON_XD]

Bro i just thought of it

[@elizabethsilverstein4901]

I love scuba diving and see these all the time but I never knew all of these facts! Wow! I will never see them the same! They are so complex!

[@AnimalFactFiles]

So glad you learned something new! It must be so much fun to see them in their natural habitat!

[@paulgirtu2463]

It's so weird to think that we're closer related to tunicates than we are to lancelets, even though, like us, lancelets spend the entirety of their life with a notochord and don't reproduce by budding. It's almost like mother nature made the lancelets, turned them into less complex tunicates, then decided "Nah, screw that, let's go back to the lancelet bodyplan again."

[@saanaa8031]

Allah made The universe🩵☪️

[@hulick6910]

Probably why tunicates are related to us more than lancelets is because they are in the group olfactores, which means they have otherwise rudimentary nostrils.

[@ElementalAer]

More like the chordata common ancestor tried to simplify it's body, but the lack of locomotion wasn't good for survival, so mobility "came back". It's funny how a complex sponge-like creature was able to survive so long and diverse.

[@paulgirtu2463]

@@ElementalAer @hulick6910 is right. Turns out that our ancestor was probably very much a mobile olfactoran, and looked almost exactly like a lancelet, but with the added ability to sniff better. So in order to understand our evolution: at first there were the chordates. Then they split into lancelets, who conserved many basal characteristics to this day; and into olfactorans, who initially looked much like the lancelets, but evolved to have vastly different appearances, evoilving into tunicates as they became sessile, or into modern fish as they developed more complex organs. I mean, hagfish and the larvae of lampreys do resemble lancelets quite a bit. It's the tunicates who went the weird route.

[@HYDROCARBON_XD]

Tunicates aren’t ancestors of us more like cousins,probably our ancestor and of tunicates looked like a lancelet but with a well developed olfactory system and without the horrific asymmetry cephalochordates developed for some reason,then some decided to go sessile and lose most of their cartilage and organs and the other ones continued to evolve a true skeleton and more complex organs,that’s vertebrates and urochordates

[@geefreck]

Fun fact, Tunicates are more closely related to John Cena than to Jellyfish

[@aetherslugstar1889]

Im working on a speculative zoology project. I decided the flora evolved from simple animals and one group's ancestors were basically colonial tunicates

[@AnimalFactFiles]

That sounds awesome! Best of luck in your studies!!

[@VelociraptorAnimations]

I don't like knowing that I'm closer related to some little see-through pipe than I am to an octopus. Still, these animals are quite interesting.

[@RabbitHorse777]

One could call a tunicate Cecil because they are sessile.

[@belindaaskew]

Amazing! Thank you

[@Mr-.Facts.]

Amazing animal fact: Some birds can sleep while flying!

[@AnimalFactFiles]

True! Frigatebirds are an example of this - though, like orcas they only sleep with one side of their brain. There's more information in this article: www.audubon.org/news/scientists-finally-have-evidence-frigatebirds-sleep-while-flying

[@Mr-.Facts.]

@@AnimalFactFiles and horses sleep standing😴

[@scallis2069]

Wow

[@Mr-.Facts.]

@@scallis2069 Glad you enjoyed this informational conversation

[@scallis2069]

@@Mr-.Facts. I like to learn more about animals

[@scallis2069]

Can u please talk about the ghost bat for october

[@scallis2069]

@FACTS AND CARTOON if that is an opshin sure

[@AnimalFactFiles]

All of our October episodes are already made, but we'll definitely get this on the list for a future video! Thanks for watching 💜

[@scallis2069]

Thank you animal fact files

[@DJLucas-xv7oe]

I thought the colored line in their body was their notochord.

[@tomkatt8274]

truly alien. we are slo related to insects, arachnids, crustaceans, myriapods, arthropods, mollusks, worms and sponges, but further, but still related

[@TheBluePhoenix008]

Do you guys only do videos on real organisms or even mythical creatures?

[@AnimalFactFiles]

We have aspirations to branch out from living real animals. Maybe one day!

[@TheBluePhoenix008]

@@AnimalFactFiles 😁

[@misoginainternalizadaopres7131]

Sea squirts are sooo beautiful

[@AnimalFactFiles]

Agreed! Love all the diversity!

[@demanso1]

0:31 😢I miss my ex

[@Kammerliteratur]

0:44 This isn't the picture of the larva of a tunicate. This is an adult Tunicate belonging to the class Appendicularia. Please fact check your graphics.

[@AnimalFactFiles]

Thanks for pointing this out! Could you explain your reasoning so we don't make future mistakes?

[@Kammerliteratur]

@@AnimalFactFiles I simply recognized the picture from my first semestre in biology. It is the textbook example for class Appendicularia. You can also find this specific image on the wikipedia article about class Appendicularia. To be fair, there is a lot of neoteny going on in class Appendicularia (which sometimes is also called Larvacea), the adults have a paedomorphic form that looks a lot like the larval state of other tunicates. But to show this picture while speaking about the larval stage of Tunicates is like showing a picture of an Axolotl while talking about tadpoles.

[@Kammerliteratur]

@@AnimalFactFiles en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larvacea

[@AnimalFactFiles]

@@Kammerliteratur Thanks so much for the explanation! We'll keep an eye for that in the future 😺

[@comradeweismann6947]

Comments for the Algorithm

[@roseivee4942]

Sis playing ka akin show ko proof

[@tomarune]

Parana plant in water

[@orsonzedd]

What the fuck do you mean even us if they're closely related to our cats they obviously have to be closely related to us