A horrifying living rock that bleeds when you cut it open
What if I told you that there existed a rock-like sea creature that lives on the coast of Chile and Peru that, when you cut it open, has bloody guts resembling a tomato? And what if you could eat that rock?
Thankfully, according to Scientific American, all of this is possible. The creature, called Pyura chilensis (or, as some people brashly refer to it, a Period Rock), is an immobile, sac-like invertebrate. To eat, it filters out microalgae from inhaled ocean water. To spawn, the hermaphrodite rocks spew eggs and sperm into the surrounding ocean in a fertile cloud. With any luck, following any sperm-egg collisions, more rocks will be born, or at the very least, a tourist’s late-night skinny-dipping session will be ruined by disgusting reproductive rock juice.
The best part is that the creatures are edible, and are typically eaten by locals with salad and rice.
Here’s a video of a sadistic German man ruthlessly cutting one open, without any emotion, just for fun: