Sea Sapphires

Ok, I was debating a lot of things, then I saw a picture of these guys and figured that, since I'm going to investigate for me anyway, might as well tell you about them. 

Sea Sapphires. 

This picture is from the link below, Just the Sea. I know they're not blue like sapphires in this picture, but please bear with me and think about how awesome that very tiny creature is. 

These guys are part of a group of tiny shrimp like animals that are collectively known as Sea Rice because they're very common and very much at the bottom of the food chain. They're only a few millimeters long, so don't expect to find them in the wild unless you're looking really closely. 

Scientists were really interested in these guys because, depending on the angle of the light that hits the tiny shrimp, their color changes. Their entire body is covered in tiny crystal plates that catch and reflect light. Different species have different shades of colors, so they aren't all bright blue, but they're still called Sea Sapphires. If the light comes in at anything other than the right angle though, they're entirely transparent, so predators can't find them. 

Basically, it's like a piece of glass, where you can look through it unless you find the perfect angle, then it lights up. Considering the water and the amount of things in there, plus how active things are, it would probably be pretty hard to spot the single flash of light before the water tosses them around enough to make them stop sparkling.

One of the really cool parts of that though is that the crystals these tiny creatures use to reflect light are made from one of the four parts of DNA, Guanine. I know that's something that some people are using that as a supplement or something, but still. That's part of DNA, that they repurposed to be flashy and cool.  

Less cool is that, like a lot of things in nature, it's only the guys that sparkle. The girls are mostly eye so that they can find those sparkling bits, and live as parasites on creatures known as Salps, who are also on my list of things to tell you about, I just haven't gotten there yet. For now, just consider them jellyfish. The guys swim in spirals so they flash a bit, and the girls are supposed to find them to get together. 

So...making the girls do all the work, again. Rude. 

This pic came from iNaturalist below, and is most of the reason I included that link, since there isn't a lot of information there. 

Most of the links cover pretty much the same thing about these guys though, so while there is probably a lot more information about these guys that I didn't find, I was mostly focused on the cool crystal plates and sparkliness. 

I hope you like these shiny dudes, and I'll see you again soon. 

Sources:

The Helm Lab Blog-- The Most Beautiful Animal you've never seen

Just The Sea-- The Magic of Sea Sapphires

Scientific American-- How Do Sea Sapphires turn Invisible

iNaturalist-- Sea Sapphires

Real Monstrosities-- Sea Sapphires

Side note- I just want to giggle for a moment that Scientific American seems to really know their people because they said that Sea Sapphires are able to hide as well as a Klingon Bird-Of-Prey. Obviously, all science geeks know Star Trek. I can't complain about that though, because I'm a pretty good Trekky.