Across the vibrant reefs you snake and crawl,
In search of shelter from an unseen threat;
The shadows write their names in salty scrawl,
Your body intertwined in blind duet.
You see the world without a lens or eye,
As veiled photoreceptors help you scry;
Your skin a dense and tangled web of sight,
That helps you find the darkness in the light.
A section of the brittle star Ophiocoma wendtii (Photo Credit: Lauren Sumner-Rooney).
This is a Heroic Rispetto, inspired by recent research which has found that brittle stars, a relative of sea stars and sea urchins, use thousands of light sensors to navigate their way around coral
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