Out of all the places on Earth, none are quite as majestic and mysterious as the deep blue ocean which covers a majority of our planet and the many creatures that make up its intricate ecosystems. From the humble freshwater trout to the dense coral reefs, every creature has its role to play in their environment. However a new species has recently emerged in the waters across the globe, trying their best to coexist with those whom have called the land beneath the waves their home. Join us as we observe and document the bizarre yet playful creatures simply known as Sea Fluffies.
Our journey begins Australiaâs own natural wonder of the world, The Great Barrier Reef. The seafloor of the region is densely populated with a number of different coral types which some residents of the reef use as nesting areas and protection against their natural enemies higher up on the food chain.
As we can see, seafluffies are no different as these two scope out the reef in search of a place for them to mate and raise their young pushing through the water with their four fin-like appendages in place of where their hooves would normally be along with flapping their wide, flat tail for extra propulsion .
Much like their original surface-dwelling counterparts, seafluffies are attracted to bright colors which has lead many to migrate to warmer tropical areas where coral reefs usually form, though just as many call the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or âTrash Islandâ their home as well which we will explore at a later time.
After several minutes of searching, the pair finally settle on a small cave covered in soft fan coral to call their home, its bright colors and soft sandy bed making it more than ideal for raising young foals. Soon, the male takes the lead as it scouts out the area for any potential danger before letting their mate know that it is safe. Excitedly, she enters and the two begin the procreation process which lasts for roughly 15 minutes before the male emerges to begin the hunt for food.
Meanwhile on the other side of the globe in Denver Massachusetts, a clutch of multicolored seafluffy eggs cling together among several other tiny pebbles in the shallow end of a nameless pond, expertly camouflaged among the tiny rocks with the exception of a bright blue egg which threatens to expose their location. It almost looks like a marble or a sweet someone dropped whilst hiking along the dirt trails, though before long the thin gelatinous membrane of the egg begins to split and rip apart due to the seafluffy within slowly tearing it apart using their teeth.
Unlike land-based fluffies, Seafluffies do not give live births and will instead lay a clutch of eggs about four-to-six weeks after insemination. These eggs are extremely sticky and will often be placed in areas of low visibility such as in caves, coral beds, or the underside of large rock formations but if none of these are available they will simply opt to bury their eggs or attempt to hide them in small rock clusters which runs the risk of suffocation or being crushed.
For these seafluffies, they are lucky enough to start taking their first steps in life as their eyes open and they experience the world for the first time in their lives. One by one, they finish consuming their eggsacks and begin clumsily flailing their fins around in an attempt to get a grip on how to use their newly formed flippers and tail, a process usually aided by the parents whom had fallen victim to the cruel acts of a human weeks earlier. Whilst we cannot say what happened exactly, the fluffy bones near the tree and old strands of rope indicate that they were tied to the branch of a nearby tree by their fins until they either starved or fell to their demise.
For those of you at home whom may be wondering why we chose to focus on two seafluffy families instead one as we usually do, this is because there are several differences between freshwater and saltwater seafluffies as you will come to find out during this documentary.
For example, Saltwater fluffies cannot survive on land and instead spend all of their life beneath the oceanâs waves. Similar to an octopus, seafluffies âinhaleâ by sucking water into the mantle cavity. As the water flushes over their gills (located inside the snout), little blood vessels called capillaries pull dissolved oxygen from the water and deliver it to the octopusâ body.
Meanwhile, Freshwater Seafluffies can survive both in and out of water as they rely on storing oxygen in a large sack inside of their bodies and withdraw from whenever they go back underwater. This is because Freshwater Seafluffies often spawn in brackish stillwater swamps, ponds, or lakes and travel on land to graze on the nearby grass and reeds.
That being said, we now go back to our saltwater family in australia where we can see that the male has been hard at work collecting seagrass and strands of kelp to bring back to their mate whom by now has ballooned to double her original size and her flippers can no longer lift her off of the seabed. As a result, her partner has been sleeping in the bright pink soft coral reef which he manages to blend into perfectly.
Days pass, and the familiar shriek of âBIGGEST POOPIESâ rang out as the mother lays her eggs and finally begins to deflate back to her normal size. Once the final egg was laid, the mother weakly pulls away with the aid of the father as they marvel at the five brightly colored eggs before the mother passes out from exhaustion and the father enters the cave to find a good place to hide the eggs.
Due to being stuck in there for so long, the cave is an absolute mess being filled with urine and feces that has been mounting over the days with her acting as a cork to keep it all in. Left with no other options, the male begins consuming her waste and attempting to filter the urine through him which, while unpleasant now, will have dire consequences later in his life.
During this time, the freshwater foals have finally mastered the use of their limbs and learned to travel on land to feed and play. Some of their favorite activities to indulge in whilst on the surface include playing tag, stacking small rocks, and rolling around in patches of mud.
However, there is one whom is ostracized from the group and is left to feed alone; the bright blue foal whom whenever he attempts to join is either threatened, pooped on, or struck with a heavy flipper which the foals refer to as âSorry Finsiesâ. Bizarrely, it seems that those with unnatural colors such as bright reds, purples, and in the case of the young foal, blue, are seen as outcasts from the rest of the group which consists of shades of gray, brown, and dark green.
Over the next few weeks, this trend persists and eventually the physical and mental abuse become too much for the fluffy, resulting in it leaving the safety of the pond prematurely in search of a place with plenty of love, food, and most importantly; water.
Whilst the internal anatomy and mental state of seafluffies may differ greatly depending on whether they are a freshwater or saltwater, one unifying factor between the two are their fins. For seafluffies, the most important part of their body is their fins as those whom are missing or deformed appendages are less likely to be considered when mating season arrives.
When exposed to the open air, their fins will rapidly oxidize with the skin cracking and flaking until the limb falls right off. To preserve their fins, freshwater fluffies cover them in a natural mucus-like film to keep them moisturized similar to a toad or a frog whilst Saltwater Seafluffies cannot.
Once again, we shift our focus back to our saltwater family whom during this time have been remaining vigilant and alert to ensure that their babies are not harmed. Despite no longer being encumbered by the eggs, the mother still does not move from the cave lest it is to relieve itself as it believes that her unborn young need the âcleanest wawaâ for them to grow big and strong.
Another week passes and the father is finally beginning to feel the effects of all the waste he cleaned out of the cave, as his fur color begins to dull and his moments become slower and slower. Due to a fluffyâs weak immune system, his body quickly fell victim to an invasive parasite which used his body as a nesting site to feed and multiply. Eventually, during a scavenging trip, his body finally gives out and falls lifelessly onto the seabed. Due to his color, as washed out as it may be, he becomes lost in a forest of corals where the parasites get to feast in peace until some unfortunate creature stumbles upon his corpse and begins the cycle all over again.
But, where one life is taken, several more are just beginning as his foals let out a series of chirps from within their eggsacks to coordinate their hatching and one after the other, the now weak and wrinkled egg membrane is torn apart by their small fins with their mother watching intently, having what most fluffies call âBiggest Heart Happiesâ. By the end of it all, all five emerged from their eggs with the only snags coming in the form of one having a fin be proportionally smaller and the other coming in the form of a dark brown foal. Still, neither they nor the mother care as the blind newborns clumsily paddle over their mother to get their first taste of her milk and feel the warmth of her touch.
Unlike freshwater seafluffy foals, saltwater foals take less time to emerge from their âeggâ at the cost of being less developed. This is because the egg gives the young a better chance of survival in the event that one or both of the parents die as they continue to develop from within and emerge when they believe it is time.
For freshwater foals, they require more time as the parents will only stick around for the first week or so after their birth before departing to a different area to start the process all over again whilst saltwater fluffies will invest far more time, energy, and love into their young by feeding them a thick, nutrient past similar to yogurt which they still refer to as âmilkiesâ. As a result, Freshwater Fluffies are far smaller with a fully grown adult being roughly the same size as a land fluffy 8-12 weeks old whilst adult seafluffies are still roughly the same size as their land-based counterparts.
With this information in mind, it is no surprise that the mother spends the rest of her day tending to her foals whilst waiting eagerly for her spouse to return. Sadly, the reality of her situation would slowly set in as hours turned to days and starvation gripped at the stomachs of both the now single mother and her children. Despite the grim circumstances, the mare pushes past her own hunger, grief, and fear to go scavenge for food herself, leaving her young foals completely unguarded.
Every day it is the same routine; feed her young, continue helping them to learn how to swim, and then set off to feed whilst telling her young not to leave the cave despite the fact that their eyes have still yet to open. But, her bravery is rewarded as one day during a routine feeding, the eyes of a small blue foal open and the first thing that they see is their exhausted mother whom has only gotten time to rest when she is either sleeping or tending to her foals.
The foal pulls away from its motherâs teet and looks up at her before uttering its very first words âMummah? Bebbeh wub mummah!â Again the mare is overcome with emotion, affirming that she is indeed their mother before pulling them into a gentle hug.
Over time, the other foals begin to open their eyes and speak as well. They have finally gotten a grasp on swimming and soon they are darting around the cave and nearby coral, playing games such as tag and hide-and-seek. Even the brown foal, despite its color, has managed to live to see early adolescence thanks to the mother whom seems to love all of her foals equally presumably due to the trauma of losing her mate and not wanting to have any more âheart hurtiesâ through the death of a foal.
Our neglected blue foal however is not having nearly as much luck as their flippers scrape against the twigs and rocks embedded into the forest floor, lacerating both their flippers and stomach as they drag themselves across the forest floor. By now, their once thick mucus layer has run incredibly thin, as a majority has rubbed off on the path it has been making for itself in addition to the warm, dry air of the summer season also rapidly dehydrating the poor seafluffy.
Of course, our blue foal is not the only one feeling the effects of summer as during its time away the harsh summer sun has begun affecting the pond where its siblings still remain by evaporating the water at a rapid rate and thus causing the reeds and grass around its edge to slowly wither and die.
With their home slowly being stripped from them, the remaining freshwater seafluffies bicker with one another over who gets to stay and who gets to go. Demands and pleas soon turn physical as a harsh slap is dealt to the cheek of a moss green fluffy whom retaliates with a slap of his own. Soon, the pond is turned into a warzone with seafluffies using their teeth and heavy flippers to try and give the other âforever sleepiesâ Blood mixes with the water and flippers are torn off and mangled until only one stood victorious over their siblings; a dark gray seafluffy with chunks of flesh having been bitten off of their left front flipper and tail.
Things are not going any better with our Saltwater Seafluffy family either as the mother has been going further and further away from her nest in order to find enough food to sustain herself, requiring more and more due to her seafluffy foals now being able to run and play, thus having them consume much more milk than ever before.
During the return trip from one of her outings, sheâd catch the faint chirping of one of her foals along with several others which spurred her to paddle as quickly as she could back to the nest to see just what the issue was only to find that to her horror, someone new has claimed their nest as their own; a blue ring octopus
The blue ring octopus is one of the worldâs most venomous marine animals. Despite their small size ranging from 12 to 20 cm and relatively docile nature, they are very dangerous if provoked or when handled because their venom contains a powerful neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin, which these unfortunate foals would find out first-hand as when they returned to their den after a day of play.
Naturally, the first instinct of the creature was to try and scuttle deeper into the cave only for the foals to foolishly follow it, thinking that it was part of some kind of game. Now backed into a corner, its color changes to a bright yellow with flashing blue spots which acts as a warning to potential predators not to get near them lest they are attacked. Once again, the adolescent seafluffies take this as a playful gesture with the blue elder member of the bunch slowly swimming towards it before the octopus lunges and wraps itself around the foalâs face and injects the lethal toxin through a swift bite.
For a fully grown adult human, a single dose of the creatureâs venom can induce total body paralysis and is potent enough to kill one 25 times over whilst for a fluffy it is the equivalent of being touched by death itself. The seafluffy does not even get a chance to let out a cry for help or out of pain as the venom quickly travels through their body and kills it in less than a second. Sensing that it is no longer a game, the remaining four foals leave the cave at once and scatter in order to find their mother for help.
By splitting up however, they only manage to put themselves in further peril as one swims straight into a school of fish and quickly becomes lost in it. Having never experienced such creatures before, the small salmon colored foal begs for the school to stop and let her out so that she could find her mother only for her to be enveloped in fish which were slowly beginning to crush her.
In reality, a fishing boat had cast its net and was pulling in its latest haul far, far away from the reef which the seafluffy called home. Itâs pleas for release became more and more muffled as she became lost in a tomb of sealife where she would spend her final few moments of life gasping for air whilst what little she had left in her was being forced out by the weight of dozens of fish.
Our second foal, the one with the disfigured flipper, found themselves among a bloom of Chrionex Fleckeri, better known as the Australian Box Jellyfish or âSea Waspâ. Despite the urgency of the situation involving his brother, the simple-minded foal easily became entranced by the sway of their tendrils which it mistook as âskettisâ, a hard-wired favorite dish among all fluffies which also included seafluffies despite the fact that they had never seen spaghetti in their entire life nor have it be mentioned by their mother.
This creature is far from safe for consumption, seafluffy or otherwise as its venom is potent enough to kill 60 humans with tentacles spanning up to three meters in length. These extremities are covered with millions of cnidocytes which, on contact, release microscopic darts that inject the venom into the affected point.
The seafluffy salivates at the thought of a bowl of warm spaghetti, and wanting something to calm him down he attempts to take in a mouthful of the creatureâs tendrils before an indescribable pain courses through its body for all but a moment before just as quickly passing away with its lifeless body sinking back down to its home.
Thankfully our brown seafluffy and her sibling are far too scared to travel alone and instead opt to huddle together outside of their home when their mother arrives all but too late. She frantically asks where their siblings had run off to but all the two can say is that the âmeanie sketti monsterâ had given their brother âforever sleepies.â
Upon hearing this, the mother quickly enters the hovel only to find it empty with the octopus having fled to avoid any further conflict whilst taking the corpse of the seafluffy with them to feed on. Now down three foals, all the mother can do is lay down in the sand in cry with her tail slapping the sand out of frustration and her two front flippers covering her eyes.
In somewhat lighter news, the blue freshwater foal which we have been watching has finally managed to stumble across a small riverbank just in time as the scales on their fins were dry and flakey and both their undersides and his stomach have been rubbed thoroughly raw with no fur remaining there at all.
Our blue seafluffy is ecstatic as even though the water is not deep enough to properly swim, it is more than enough for it to submerge its fins and regenerate its mucus layer. In time, the scales and fluff it lost will regrow but the scars will remain and will affect its chances at finding a mate once it is ready.
As for the pond, it has completely dried up by this point, leaving behind nothing but the bloated corpses of the blue seafluffyâs siblings with the exception of the gray one which stayed until the very last drop of water evaporated and it was left with no other choice but to migrate. Much like their brother before them, this seafluffy will have to endure dragging their body across the ragged terrain which thanks in part to the summer heat has become far more grueling to travel than ever before.
Days come and go, and eventually our surviving foals from both sides of the world have managed to do the one thing any fluffy parent, land or sea, could hope for; they have become big and strong and are now ready to leave the safety of their homes to search for a mate.
Starting with our seafluffies, the brown foal has grown into a fullblown mare, complete with a luscious flowing pink and yellow mane, shiny scales, and an extended tail to make swimming easier with the same going for her brother.
The mother on the other hand, has aged fairly gracefully and judging by the tint of her coat it is possible that she may be able to have another set of foals before she is no longer able to. Her breasts have shrunk down due to not having to produce milk, and finally her scales are beginning to lose their luster, and yet despite all of this she wears the widest smile she could muster, proud that her babies can finally have families of their own.
Then there is our freshwater seafluffy whom has been managing to keep themselves healthy by grazing on grass and the occasional reed, though it quickly becomes apparent that the shallow river cannot be his permanent home as not only are they getting too large but the innate desire to mate is beginning to envelop their thoughts. Not wanting to leave the water, the seafluffy waddles its way downstream in hope of running into another fluffy to call their mate or âspecial friendâ
Much like normal fluffies, Seafluffies reach their sexual maturity once they reach roughly 24 weeks of age or five and a half months old, though their mating rituals are quite different and slightly more intricate than that of the average fluffy.
Rather than meeting one-on-one, seafluffies from around the globe will congregate in large groups in order to find a special friend. From there, the groups will begin to âwindow shopâ, observing the mares and stallions available and looking for particular traits that they favor such as bright colors or pristine scales.
However, the journey is not an easy one as several fluffies will perish on their way to or during these mass meetings. Crocodiles, sharks, and seasnakes are common predators of the seafluffy and as we just saw jellyfish and octopus are tantalizing distractions for the uneducated seafluffy.
To prepare, seafluffies will gorge themselves on as much food as they can find before departing, therefore ensuring that they do not need to stop to eat and put themselves in potentially dangerous situations, which our seafluffies seem to know all too well as they consume well above their weight in seagrass, kelp, leaves,and etcetera. Once full, they bid their final farewells to their mother and home before racing towards a meeting spot using some kind of natural GPS they have.
The saltwater seafluffies travel several miles along the Great Australian Bight and end up in the Indian Ocean where nearly fifty other seafluffies have come to mingle with both the brown seafluffy and her brother setting out to try their luck at finding a mate.
For her brother, his striking colors and lack of any major scars make him the ideal mate for other saltwater seafluffies and is quickly being fought over by mares whom are slapping each other in an attempt to get the other to cease their persuit in making him their âspecial friendâ, though whilst they are occupied he would end up leaving with an entirely different mare never to be seen again by either of the mares or his sister.
The brown mare however, finding a mate would prove to be far more difficult as due to her striking hair colors and dark coat, she ends up alienating both the freshwater and saltwater bachelors whom see her as either âtoo brightâ or âpoopy coloredâ. After some time, the group finally disburse with those whom hadnât managed to find a partner now having to travel even further to the next meeting spot
Things would not be going any better for the freshwater seafluffy either as those in attendance at his mating circle in the North Atlantic Ocean are put off by his various scars left over from his journey from home when he was young. Distraught, our freshwater seafluffy carries on to the next meeting spot off the coast of Namibia and Angola in the South Atlantic Ocean.
As fate would have it, our brown saltwater seafluffy would also be in attendance at this meeting ground and for the first time, our two seafluffies meet for the first time. As for what happens next, we will simply allow these magnificent creatures to do the rest speaking for us.
âHewwo, fwuffy am Bwuwie. Fwuffy mawe haiw, am su pwetty. Wat am fwuffie namsie?â
âTank yuâŚFwuffy am Shewwy. Bwuwie hab many tummeh an finsie hewties.â
âBwuwie hab many meanie munstah bwuddahs an sissies. Bwuwie, wun faw way an get finsie an tummeh hewties.â
âIt otay, Shewwy nu gib finsie o tummeh hewties. Shewwy wan Bwuwsie be speciaw fwiend!â
âWewwy? Ou wan munstuh fwuffie be speciaw fwien?â
âNu am munstuh! Bwuwie am fwuffie! Fwuffie am fo huggies an wub!â
And with that, our two seafluffies embrace and set off to start their new life somewhere in the world. What adventures await them, only time will tell but for us here at Planet Fluffy, our time has run out for this episode. Tune in next week where we return to the surface and examine the often overlooked microfluffy and how just one or two escaped micros can lead to the development of a massive underground civilization when given the opportunity.