(W81-8) 14" Natural Venus Glass Sponge and 50 similar items

(Internal #W81-8) You are bidding on this genuine, natural GLASS SPONGE called the Venus Flower Basket (Euplectella aspergillum, phylum Porifera), belonging to a small group of glass sponges (Hexactinellida). This sponge lives 1500 to 15,000 feet under the waters of the western Pacific around the Philippine Islands and Japan. EXTRA LARGE, Venus sponge average 12-16" long size. This venus sponge is 14" long. This is exactly the item you would receive. With a cruel twist of fate, pairs of small shrimp (spongicola) swim through the sieve in the top into the "bridal chamber" and enjoy meals that come through the sieve. However, the shrimp couple grow too big to get out - the home becomes a jail - but they live happily there, producing young that leave the home and find a sponge of their own with their own "bride" or "groom". The shrimp couple dies together in the sponge, so it becomes their burial coffin as well. For centuries, this skeleton of the glass sponge, with its pair of tiny dried shrimp imprisoned inside, was prized as a wedding gift in Japan. Newlyweds regarded it as a symbol of a long life together into old age and into the same grave. One of the more unusual "wedding gifts" we've seen! How does it form this glass? The sponge extracts silicic acid from seawater and converts it into silica, then forms it into an elaborate skeleton of glass fibers. The sponge's low-temperature process for creating and arranging such fibers may be a useful technology in the fiber optics industry, due to the fact that only high temperature methods are used in this industry now. There is a natural mud/sand base still on the end of the sponge where it was removed from the sea floor; natural curvature, it lays on its side as shown. Suitable for display in a glass dome or low two-prong display stand (not included). There are free-moving inclusions in every glass sponge (sand clumps, bits of marine debris and likely shrimp), but it would take a microscope to examine all the inclusions to determine if there are shrimp in each sponge. Please do not require this of us. WEIRD AND FUN, sure to be a conversation piece wherever it is displayed. UNUSUAL GIFT for that special someone! WE SHIP WORLDWIDE, see the chart for postage to your country.