The sea squirt is a tunicate, a vertebrate that gets its name from its habit of squirting water when it is disturbed. It starts life as a well-adjusted organism that spends its time eating and growing. Its passing into adult life is marked by establishing a home on some coral and then eating the one organ that it no longer needs - its brain.

How like so many of the organizations that we work for and deal with in our everyday lives: they start out well but eventually decline into self-cannibalism.