The thoughts of Aurigamonas

While literature surfing again, came across this adorable little cercozoan:

Aurigamonas solis. Diminutive amoeboflagellate, ambitious apetite. Seems to be a common theme in the protist world... (Vickerman et al. 2005 Protist)

That diagram was desperately asking for something to be done. It had to be. And so I did it:

True story: the phagocytic vacuole together with the nucleus express the cell's emotions. But seriously, why would it attack something so big and so armoured!? (Hope the authors wouldn't mind too much someone mutilating their drawings like that...)

On a more serious note, Aurigamonas seem very interesting in terms of cell structure:

The cell is biflagellated with multitudes of haptopodia sticking out and capped by haptosomes. The diagram shows them in varying stages of development (1-5). pno - paranuclear organelle (looks interesting!), cv - contractile vacuoles, sv - spicule-containing vacuoles, mt - microtubule rootlet system (reduced), m - mitochondrion, tv - thick-membraned vesicle. (Vickerman et al. 2005 Protist)

Don't you just wanna dangle this one by its 'tail'?