Workers at the oil and gas company BP made a video of Bathyphysa conifer, a deep-sea critter, while collecting video footage some 4,000 feet (1,220 meters) under the sea with a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV).

The creature was recently swimming off the coast of Angola, but the BP workers who videotaped it did not have any idea what the noodle-armed creature was. They thought that it resembled the deity of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and named it based on that belief.

The National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, England, later identified the creature accurately as a siphonophore. Siphonophores are related to jellyfish, said a website dedicated to these fascinating creatures.

Casey Dunn, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Brown University in Rhode Island, created the website, which mentions that siphonophores are colonial animals.

The spaghettilike B. conifer is made up of many different multicellular organisms known as zooids. These organisms are similar to regular, solitary animals. However, they are attached to other zooids to become a more complex organism.

The process starts after one zooid develops from a fertilized egg. Other zooids emerge from the original zooid and keep on budding up until whole animal is formed, according to the siphonophore website.

Each zooid performs a specific task, like some of the constituent zooids catch food and eat it and others help reproduce. All the zooids survive together and do absolutely fine.

The deep-sea "spaghetti monster" belongs to suborder Cystonectae, says the World Register of Marine Species.