An intriguing freshwater specimen.

[lperepol1]

Found in my backyard 4-acre pond, Southern Central British Columbia, Canada, West Kootenay Region. Elevation 500 m.

[WWWW]

Nice, sharp photo !

[ImperatorRex]

Nice!

[imkap]

A Batman larva, nice find

[Phill Brown]

Good find.
Where in the world and Idea of size would be great.

[macnmotion]

Wonderful. From a stack?

[lperepol1]

Yes, from an image stack of 24 photos, using Helicon Focus.

[lperepol1]

Here is the stack of micrographs the image was derived from

[Sure Squintsalot]

Looks like it escaped from the Burgess Shale:

Screenshot 2023-05-18 110525.jpg (111.48 KiB) Viewed 2199 times

That's just uphill from you, right?

[FredH]

I've seen a bunch of what appear to be the same creature (rotifers?) in water from a pond in Wisconsin. Side profile more or less like that of a streamlined turtle. Any idea of the function of the two "crash bars" in the front?

Is this a fresh, but dead, specimen? Mine moved quickly enough so I couldn't have gotten a sequence of frames to stack (well, especially since I don't have a camera on my microscope yet). Your image has far more detail that what I've seen peering at these things through my microscope.

Thanks for posting this!

[dtsh]

Looks like it escaped from the Burgess Shale:

Screenshot 2023-05-18 110525.jpg

That's just uphill from you, right?

Haha, interesting find on similarity!

I've seen a bunch of what appear to be the same creature (rotifers?) in water from a pond in Wisconsin. Side profile more or less like that of a streamlined turtle. Any idea of the function of the two "crash bars" in the front?

Is this a fresh, but dead, specimen? Mine moved quickly enough so I couldn't have gotten a sequence of frames to stack (well, especially since I don't have a camera on my microscope yet). Your image has far more detail that what I've seen peering at these things through my microscope.

Thanks for posting this!

I've seen similar as well and also did not get any images, but I think you're right that it's a rotifer.

[actinophrys]

Although bdelloids are the most familiar, rotifers come in a wonderful variety of shapes. This one is Platyias. I imagine the spines on the front and back are to make it just that much harder for something to swallow.