Each week, Atlas Obscura is providing a new short excerpt from our upcoming book, Wild Life: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Living Wonders (September 17, 2024). Everyone knows about the ocean’s flashier builders—the corals that sculpt reefs, the mollusks that spin up perfect pearls. But thousands of feet down, underappreciated creatures called xenophyophores work hard to build themselves some of the most fascinating homes on the seafloor, from studio apartments to elaborate, multichambered compounds that resemble morel mushrooms or chunks of honeycomb. Xenophyophores—xenos for short—are some of the deep…
