It’s thin, squishy, and shaped slightly like a human. It even moves a little bit.
The unusual creature was found “floating along the shore” at an undisclosed beach in China on July 9, 2018. Most locals were “scared to approach,” according to the Daily Star, but as is usually the case, someone eventually rose to the challenge.
In the video, a man holds up the spongy humanoid by its “head” while its “feet” sway back and forth. It’s certainly an odd thing to look at. But what is it?
The Hidden Underbelly, who shared the video, at first suggested it “could be a new species of sea life or [a] mutated starfish.” Many in the comments wondered the same, questioning if perhaps Fukushima radiation could be the culprit.
However, the channel later turned to Dr. Karl Shuker, a British zoologist and cryptozoologist, who suggested instead that the oddity may be “a mass of sponge, which the man holding it may have modified in shape so as to look vaguely human.”
In this case, the strange video would only be half hoax — the sponge is real, but the man holding it may have flattened and intentionally shaped it into the humanoid monstrosity we see today. A few commenters think even the movement is fake, the man operating the sponge “like a puppet.”
Regardless, some of the weirdest creatures on Earth live in the sea. In fact, according to MIT News, simple sea sponges may have been one of the first animals to ever exist on our planet, if not the first.
