New Zealands's Mysterious Sponge-like Creature

Kryptonomic writes: "New Zealand's marine experts are puzzled by the parasitic sponge-like animal that could threaten NZ's aquaculture industry. Apparently the animal, which so far has not been identified, kills all other sealife by embedding itself on the victim and slowly feeding on it. The parasite also reproduces asexually and could end up dominating the ecological niche it occupies."

Comments

Feral sponge???

[PD]

Is that some kind of sponge that escaped from a kitchen sink somewhere and reverted to a life in the wild? The mind boggles...

Well, you learn something every day.

[Darwin_Frog]

Embeds itself on the victim and then slowly feeds on it?

I didn't know sponges even went to law school.

Public reactions:

[tunah]

Microsoft's Steve Ballmer has announced that these sponges have taken hold due NZ being filled with "GPL apologists and anti-IP maniacs".

RMS has announced on the gnu.org site that the evils of software patents and proprietary software has kept us too busy reinventing the wheel to destroy evil sponges.

Linus Torvalds posted on comp.os.linux.sponges:
I couldn't care less what this evil sponge is doing. I'm just working to make my sponge the evillest it can be.

George Bush has announced the US would be 'declaring war' on sponges. This follows similar moves on drugs, civil liberties and reckless use of frisbees.

The unidentified evil sponge was not available for comment.

Fungus

[Perdo]

This is the fungus that was growing on the OUTSIDE of mir when it hit the ocean in that region. Imagine the mutation rate of a fungus in a hard radiation enviroment. Fast enough mutation to become an extremephile living on the outside of MIR. Extreme enough to survive reentery? Shure...

Re:New Zealand

[RedWizzard]

Its The North Island and The South Island

You forgot The West Island, aka Australia.

Re:reproduces asexually

[WolfWithoutAClause]

No, black and green fly, various bacteria and other asexually reproducing organisms have been around far longer than mankind has.

There's pro's and cons to asexual reproduction. On the one hand, you reproduce more quickly (some black fly are even born pregnant!), on the other a disease can swing through and get all of your sibblings because you are genetic clones.

All known organisms except bacteria do both asexual and sexual reproduction. There seems to be limits to how many generations purely asexual reproduction can occur before the damage kills. Not quite sure how bacteria deal with this, but probably their genome is shorter and they have extensive genetic repair mechanisms and possibly use some DNA swapping, plus they reproduce really fast...