Savannah: This is a single-celled organism. It's a kind of algae called Valonia ventricosa, though the common name is "sailor's eyeball," which is just [inhales] delightfully creepy.

Of course, an actual eyeball is made of hundreds of millions of cells. This is just one; this is just one super-sized one. To reach several centimeters in size, a Velonia cell does something kinda weird. It duplicates its DNA multiple times but without splitting into multiple cells.

So, each Velonia has lots of nuclei, and that means lots of control centers. Like, all around the cell, so nothing has to travel too far. Also, the whole thing is surrounded by a very strong cell wall made predominantly of cellulose, which is the same thing that makes plant cells tough.

But because Velonia's cell wall is much thicker, researchers in the early 20th century were able to study it more easily and were able to learn a lot about cellulose. Those discoveries paved the way for lots of cool uses of cellulose, everything from old-school film to high-tech aerogels.

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