Underwater Christmas

This miniature underwater
Christmas tree shows how wonderfully
God blends the beautiful with
the practical.

You’ll find these festive decorations
year-round on coral reefs all
over the world. They’re actually the
feeding and breathing organs of
Spirobranchus giganteus, the Christmas
tree worm. It’s all there in the
name—Spirobranchus, or “spiral gill”
(although at 1½ inches [3 cm], giganteus seems a bit of a stretch).

Christmas tree worms begin life
by anchoring themselves on coral
and building sand-tube homes as
the coral grows around them. They
unfurl their colorful, multipurpose
gills into the ocean currents to
extract oxygen and to filter plankton
for food. The gills have tiny hairlike
cilia that channel the food into the
worm’s mouth. (They also collect
sand, which is carried to storage sacs
for tube improvement projects.)

But look quick. The slightest
disturbance transforms this holiday
landscape into a barren desert. In the
blink of an eye, a forest of worms can
retract their gills and disappear into
their burrows to avoid predators. But
if you’re patient, they’ll slowly reappear
within a minute, revealing once
again the beauty and artistry that
our Creator put into even a practical
necessity like gills.

https://answersingenesis.org/aquatic-animals/underwater-christmas/ This article originally appeared on answersingenesis.org

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