Dec. 4, 2008 A submarine expedition that went looking for
visually flashy sea creatures instead found a drab, mud-covered
blob that may turn out to be truly spectacular indeed. The
grape-like animal, tentatively named the Bahamian Gromia, is
actually a single-celled organism, fully one inch long. But what
makes it really fantastic is that it moves -- very slowly -- by
rolling itself along the ocean floor. "At first, we assumed they
were snails, because they had trails," said Sönke Johnsen, an
associate professor of biology at Duke University. But after
sucking up a few with the tools aboard the NOAA research
submarine Johnson-Sea-Link and having a look, they figured the
soft, nondescript blobs were simply some kind of elaborate poop.
"We called them doo-doo balls," Johnsen said. "We watched the
video over and over," Johnsen said. The trails couldn't be the
result of currents because they went in several directions at
the same spot, and sometimes they even changed course. And they
weren't the result of rolling