Hydra Anemoweed

The hydra anemoweed split from its ancestor. As its name implies, it has many mouths leading into a central stomach. This is a consequence of instinct and learning working in tandem with its unusual nervous system-based body plan regulation. As it grows, it senses its environment and will notice prey repeatedly moving right past specific parts of its body and “imagine” itself having a mouth there to catch it, changing the body form that its zooids are instructed to maintain. The logic and processing that goes into decisions like this, as in its ancestors, is handled entirely by the interconnected nervous systems of all the zooids communicating and working together, making the ability to decide to have a body part somewhere an example of emergent intelligence. What makes it unique compared to the emergent intelligence of most colonial organisms is that it affects its body form, rather than only its behavior. It is able to use some of its mouths as legs to “walk” and graze on flora and microbes while simultaneously catching prey from the water with the others.

The 'hydra anemoweed has developed a new category of zooid, related to holdfast zooids, called action zooids. There are two main types of these, one which threads between the external gatherer zooids and one which lines the inner surface of the body cavity. Action zooids are almost entirely muscle and serve to increase the strength and speed at which the zoon can move. These also allow it to catch quicker prey, such as swarmers and the occasional gilltail.

The hydra anemoweed’s gonad organones no longer violently burst. They have dedicated fissure planes where the connections between zooids are weaker, allowing them to break open with a spasm of their action zooids. Once the gametes have all been released, the gonads stitch back up relatively quickly. The hydra anemoweed has a varied number of gonads per individual, similar to its heads, and will grow more if it can afford to in times of abundance. Similar to its ancestor, it broadcast spawns, and an embryo will form an embryonic zoon before it hatchs, using yolk and photosynthesis for energy.