This animal may not seem weird at first. It’s sort of just a shrimpy little thing that swims around in the water getting eaten by just about everything else in the ocean from tuna to humpback whales. Krill get eaten, that’s their major talent on Earth. But amazingly, that talent is what drives most of the ocean ecosystem.

Krill are the vital link in the food chain between the phytoplankton, tiny plants that float in the oceans, and the bigger animals like fish and marine mammals. These little invertebrates combined weight has been estimated to weigh more than all the other animals on Earth put together. Their summer parties are so jam packed and of the chain, that they can be seen from space. Krill are so tasty to some whales that their mouths are full of baleen, a material that filters the ocean water for krill. There are 12 species of whale that feed using baleen to eat krill and small fish, including the humpback and mighty blue whale.  For a critter that is about an inch long, they sure have some serious ecological weight. Some krill avoid getting eaten or lost for as long as ten years, which is pretty good for lower level prey animals. Of course, even as abundant as they are, some species of krill have been reported to be in decline, which would cause total ecological collapse and all that blah blah blah, who isn’t on the endangered species list anyway? Its so 2004. Anyway, National Geographic is all about these exciting little guys.