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Happy 2013, everyone!
To reflect back to warmer times, here is some video of a puddle ciliate I found this summer. It is not so high quality as what seb28 and Gekko have been posting, but hopefully the peculiar subject will help make up for that.
Puddles are a good place to find odd protozoans that are not in most guides, which tend to focus on freshwater over soil. This one looks similar to some kinds with mucous tubes, like smaller Cyrtolophosis, but nothing I found mentions collecting material like you see here.
Happy 2013 to you and glad to see you post again. Thank you for posting this extremely interesting and educational video. I've never seen anything like that. It boggles my mind how single-celled creatures appear to have a sense of purpose, and appear to know what they are about and to act upon it. And what assiduousness!
Thanks to you both. I've never seen anything else like this either, even in books. The apparent purpose has its limits – at one point the ciliate just wandered off and had to start its case over – but there's a lot of subtle complexity in how they act.
The camera is a Canon 5D Mark II, attached to the microscope by an eyepiece adapter. It seems to work well with the low light from the microscope; most of the limitations you see here, like the chromatic aberration, are more from the subject side.
actinophrys said:
The apparent purpose has its limits – at one point the ciliate just wandered off and had to start its case over
I frequently do that myself 
.
Beautiful, indeed, and made so much lovelier by the finely-matched soundtrack. Keep up the good work!
BR,
Johann
Very interesting video. It looks like some form of a worm, and not a ciliate though. Do you have any idea of the size of it? What lens were you using?
This used 10× objective and ocular lenses. It's only about 140 μm long; though worm-shaped, the insides and movement are typical of creeping ciliates like Spirostomum, Stichotricha, Uroleptus, and so on. I know the video does not show details very well, but in some frames you can see it has a broad oral cavity with at least some surrounding membranes.
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