Shape-shifting is a power usually restricted to the pages of a science fiction book or a big-screen horror monster. While most of us will never meet an organism that can radically alter its shape in real life, evolution has provided some organisms with just such ability. Here are few of the surprising shape-shifting organisms.
Slime Mold
A yellow mass of gel pulsing toward you is the stuff of nightmares. This blob is hungry and searching for food. Bright light scares it and sends it undulating away to find darkness in which to hide. It hunts food by inching across a surface and continually changing shape until it finds something to eat. It’s not a monster. It’s a slime mold. They can exist as single-celled organisms living separately. But when the conditions are right, these individuals can join together to form one enormous cell (called a plasmodium) with many nuclei. Physarum polycephalum, the most studied slime mold, can find the most efficient way through mazes.
Cuttlefish
Cuttlefish are amazing creatures. To communicate, cuttlefish will flash complex patterns across their skin using special colored cells that they can contract or expand at will. This ability allows them to blend into their background or even mimic other animals. Other cuttlefish have been seen changing their shapes and colors to become globs of algae, branches of coral, floating seaweed, and other sea creatures.
Puffer Fish
The puffer fish (aka blowfish) are among the cutest inhabitants of the ocean. In their relaxed form, they appear somewhat ungainly and seem to peer out at the world with expressions of complete unconcern. When attacked, the puffer fish swallows many times its own weight in water and blows up into a huge and unwieldy sphere, often covered in sharp spikes. Its skin is particularly flexible so that it does not tear as it is stretched. The skin contains strong proteins that give it rigidity when taut, making it harder for attackers to puncture.
If a predator does manage to catch and eat a puffer fish, then they are in for a nasty surprise. Many puffer fish have internal organs packed with potent toxins.
Octopus vulgaris
Octopus vulgaris (aka the common octopus) has some very uncommon abilities. When it comes to camouflage on the seabed, these creatures make it difficult for prey or predators to spot them. These octopuses can hide themselves almost completely in plain sight by pulling in their long tentacles, changing the shape and texture of their bodies, and using their ability to change color. Should a predator discover the octopus despite its disguise, the octopus can change its shape in other ways to escape.
Deepstaria enigmatica
Deepstaria enigmatica is a type of jellyfish that does not have the tightly contained bell shape of many jellyfish. The walls of its bell are very thin and slowly ripple as it moves.
At one moment, it might be tightly contained within itself. The next, the creature is using its huge surface area to drift toward you. The shape of the jellyfish is controlled by a mesh of muscles embedded in the walls.
The jellyfish captures its prey when they blunder inside the parachute of its body. Once inside, the walls contract and expose the unfortunate captive to stinging cells that paralyze it, allowing the jellyfish to begin digesting its victim.
Sea Cucumbers
Like many invertebrates without exoskeletons, sea cucumbers move by suitably changing their shape. Some sea cucumbers can spread a large array of slender tentacles to grab passing particles of food or even larger creatures. Perhaps the most shocking way that a sea cucumber can change shape is found at the opposite end from its mouth. When threatened, they can expel their guts from their anus. The filaments of the guts are toxic and can kill the attacker. These creatures can rapidly move from a rock-hard structure to a jellylike flexibility. Their tissues are full of stiff protein collagen.
Tentacled Caterpillar
When entomologist Aaron Pomerantz was examining the top of the tree canopy in the Peruvian jungles, he noticed something strange. While shouting down to his colleagues, he saw something moving on a leaf nearby.
The jungles of the world teem with creepy-crawlies, so that is not so unusual. What was strange was that this particular bug was clearly reacting to the noise of his voice. Every time that he yelled, the small caterpillar would shoot out four tentacles. By pumping liquid into the appendages on their backs, these creatures can double their length
Also called horned-spanworms or filament bearers, these caterpillars have strange shape-shifting abilities that are not yet explained by science.
Mutable Rainfrog
Although we’ve seen invertebrates change the texture of their skin, the first vertebrate to do so was discovered in Ecuador in 2006. The mutable rainfrog can rapidly go from a smooth-skinned frog to one with spines. Creature is able to respond to threats by becoming spiky. Due to its spiky appearance, the mutable rainfrog has been unofficially dubbed the “punk rocker frog” by the team that discovered it.
Northern White-Faced Owl
Puffing yourself up to deter predators is a common tactic in the animal kingdom. The northern white-faced owl can go both ways. Depending on the threat, the owl will either make itself larger or smaller. If the predator is close to its own size, the owl spreads its wings and flattens the feathers around its face to make it appear much larger than its relatively small body size.
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