Collotheca ornata

Collotheca ornata is a member of the Rotifer family but with a specialized head, rather than the usual rotors to produce a current. She sits there in a relaxed mode with her fan spread. When food bumbles into the fan area, she snaps the fan shut and forces the food into the mouth, where it goes down the shoot and is ground up by a hard silica mastax, which is like two grinding plates that grind up the food.

Rotifers have about 1000 cells, two eyes and they actually have a brain made up of 15 cells. They have survived about 20 times longer than humans. Think of that. LOL

1. This first shot is at 100x to show perspective. It is attached to the crotch of two needles of and aquarium plant.

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Interesting series
Brian v.

wow, very unique.

Thanks Brian and Rick. They are quite interesting to watch too. I mean, they don't do much, but they are moving all the time and you can see the stuff inside them moving around and the mastax grinding up food. It's always interesting to see them actually catch some food too.

Cool microscopic stuff Mitch!

Thanks Kurt. I did get video, but can't edit it until I get a new graphics card for this new computer. The one I did buy just isn't enough.

nice series...good information too...whats the green thing around?...

Thanks Rakesh. The green thing is an aquarium plant called Hornwort. Here's a picture of it. This will give you some idea of the size of the animals I am posting. What you see in my pics is just one little needle from one little sprig of this plant, where it forks. The forks always have something living in them, or several somethings. The rest of the surface of the plant is usually crawling with little bugs that sort of keep it clean, by eating any of the small life forms, plant or animal that start to grow on it. Everything has a purpose and we are just part of the big wheel. Each life is just as important as any other, including our own.

I don't know which amazes me more; the creature, or your ability to capture an image of something so small!! Very cool.

Thanks KP, I am constantly amazed by what's in a drop of water. I must admit, rotifers are my favorite, but every bug I have been able to study has some unique thing that it specializes in. This rotifer has about 1000 cells in it, but it's the same size as some single celled animals. She has organs, a complete digestive tract, eyes a nervous system and a brain, and yet some single celled animals can do as much as she can and some can do it better.

The longer I look at these things, the more respect I have to give them. I still have not figured out yet, how a single celled paramecium with no heart, brain, nervous system, eyes or organs knows what death is. And yet, they do, and they fight it with just as much energy as we would ourselves. Which means, they also know what life is. It's just pretty weird and a huge mystery.

neat series, Mitch

Thanks for looking Dean.

Here are links to two videos of these guys that I was just now able to mix down and uplad to YouTube. They give you an idea of what this guy really does.

Short Video.

Longer video and several rotifers of different ages.