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Listen as Nautilus Scientists Try to Figure Out What This Glowing Purple Orb Is

Can you pronounce cnidaria?

I'll first say, that no matter what that glowing, purple blob ends up being, I like it. I like its size, its shape, its color, especially that part in the middle where it fades into pink. I wish I could reach out, play with it, and toss it around like a hacky sack.

Looks like I wasn't the only one compelled by it. In this video by Exploration Vessel Nautilus, a scientific expedition that is equipped with a live broadcasting studio, scientists gawked for minutes, struggling to figure out what the "slurp" was.

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Folks over at Motherboard thought it could have been a lost toy. Maybe it was an alien. Someone suggested… egg sac? My favorite was disco ball.

Is it squishy, someone wants to know? Does it bite? That crab in the video loiters around the "slurp," as if it's keeping the secret from us as to what it actually is.

As fun as it is to hear scientists in clueless amazement, the suspension ends when they fairly easily identify the slurp after their device picks it up.

Drum roll…. It's a cnidaria, the pronunciation almost as mysterious as the creature itself. The "c" is silent, so the word sounds more like nye-dare-ee-uh.

The cnidaria is a phylum, or category of life broader than species, distinguished by their cnidocytes—special cells they use for capturing prey.

The guessing game was fun while it lasted. But knowing now that the slurp has cnidocytes makes me less drawn to playing with it.