A colorful little tardigrade...

Here is a video of a fairly colorful tardigrade circumventing his little world of detritus looking for his next meal. Doesn't look like he found any and obviously has no concept that he may have traveled that path before.

 

The little fellow went for a nap (died?) after the video was taken which allowed me to take a number of stationary photos. This enabled me to stack a number of photos to get the whole image into focus.

I also managed a photo of his buccal apparatus which could help in IDing this specimen. So far we've only identified him to genus level; Genus Ramazzottius.

 

Lacrymaria olor (Swan tear)

 Yesterday I had found a, rare for me, Lacrymaria olor specimen and decided to move it to a clean slide for some imaging. I did manage to pick it up in a micro-pipette and transferred the water droplet to a new slide. A quick check with a low power objective confirmed it was still there so a cover slip was put on. Another quick search failed to locate it and a slow, methodical second look indicated why. It seems L. olor was swimming around in the water outside the cover slip. I washed it back into the jar so I could look for it another day.

Fast forward to today, I found 2 specimens from a different source. Go figure! Anyway, this time I made a video to put up. No feeding display, only searching.