There’s plenty going on in your local pond beyond the ducks and the weeds! Look closer (really, really closer) and you might just see a Stentor. Neither a plant nor animal, the Stentor is in a subgroup protozoa. These one-celled wonders are so big (500-2000 microns!) that you can sometimes spot them without a microscope.

Shaped like a trumpet, they swirl water with tiny hairs called cilia to gobble up bacteria and algae. Trumpet-shaped, Stentor comes in fabulous colours—blue-green, or even green if they’ve got algae roommates doing photosynthesis for them!

Like the common earthworm, if you cut one in half, both halves grow into new Stentors! And then again, and again, and again, until you’ve got an unstoppable Stentor army. Rise up, my little trumpet-shaped brigade!