10 Incredibly Intricate Microscopic Organisms That Will Blow Your Mind
It’s easy to point to large eukaryotes, like trees or mammals, to illustrate the kind of complexity that can occur in living things. Yet, a huge portion of eukaryotes is actually microscopic. The conditions of the microscopic world produce creatures of stunning intricacy. Ironically, it’s a lack of complexity on the part of our own eyes that keeps us from seeing it.
10 Radiolarians
The humble, single-celled radiolarian is renowned for its ability to form intricate skeletons with radial symmetry. Their spiny, snowflake-like armor is made from lattices of opaline silica and features structural complexity bordering on the anomalous. Radiolarians of this kind have existed for at least 600 million years, and slightly simpler variants existed long before then.