Discovery Science 🧬

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Pyrosoma: 15-meter ghost sausage. What is this incredible creature? Often two brothers face different fates. It seems that they grew up in similar conditions, received approximately the same amount of love, had similar education and habits. They even looked alike in childhood, but now they are no longer recognizable as close relatives. This is our story with pyrosomes. Once upon a time we were the same chordates, frolicking in the sea waters. Only now our ancestors pumped up their spines and climbed onto land, and the pyrosomes became, uh... 15-meter-long transparent sausages? At first glance, a pyrosome is a giant translucent organism that resembles a pipe welded on one side. This “hyper jellyfish” sluggishly swims through the ocean at depths of up to 1000 meters and feeds on something unknown and unclear how. But if you look at a deep-sea bag through a magnifying glass, you will find that it consists of tens of thousands of different creatures 3-4 millimeters in size! Each animal looks like a barrel drenched in mucus and has a proud name - zooid (photo 4). The viscous substance surrounding it is called the tunic and consists of a substance that looks suspiciously like cellulose. Each zooid is connected to its neighbors using special threads. When one zooid decides to filter the next portion of water through itself, it will pull the strings and provoke the same action in its neighbors. As a result, the flow of liquid will rush inside the dome and create a jet thrust that will push the entire party forward. Most of the space inside the zooid is occupied by the digestive tract and associated muscles. The huge throat continuously filters mind-boggling volumes of water, by the standards of a pyrosome. The remaining part of the body is occupied by insignificant tripe: the heart, hematopoietic and reproductive organs, and all sorts of glands. Only a special luminescent organ and a tiny nerve node are worthy of special mention. The first adds +100 style to the animal and attracts plankton to the colony, and the second controls all the fluttering of the micro-animal. The intellectual power of the zooids is barely enough to swim the entire colony in the same direction. But they came up with an interesting reproduction system. Each zooid has both female and male reproductive cells. He fertilizes himself at every opportunity. The resulting egg contains 1 embryo and a lot of yolk. When the embryo completes its formation, it will turn into a cytozooid - the ancestor of the next colony. She will begin to produce new zooids, which will form a free-floating tube. My rating for the pyrosome: 8 zooids out of 10. This animal manages to gather into communities of thousands without any complex mental activity; even the cockroaches next to them are incredible intellectuals. - - - - - We have a huge group, which is 11 years old and there are many zoologists who write tons of text every day from the field in which they are specialists. Due t

Giant weta: These monsters are replacing hares in New Zealand! And also mice, shrews, squirrels and even moles. But how did it happen that the grasshopper - although damn big - managed to occupy a whole bunch of ecological niches at once and turn into the most important inhabitant of the jungle? In short, he was just lucky! Several tens of millions of years ago, the ancestors of the Ueta accidentally came to the New Zealand archipelago and found themselves in a real paradise! The climate is ideal, there is plenty of food, and the only predators are birds and bats, who have their own affairs. The insects quickly realized that they needed to reproduce and increase their mass while they had the opportunity. This is how once ordinary grasshoppers turned into real giants: the largest wetas can be up to 22 centimeters in length with a body weight of 70 grams. “It’s not that much,” you say. “He weighs as much as two sparrows,” I answer. Significantly grown grasshoppers gradually settled across all the large islands of New Zealand, divided into 11 species and densely populated all landscapes. Some moved to rocks and rocky outcrops, others climbed into trees, and still others remained digging in the leaf litter. But all of them, regardless of place of residence, are ready to eat everything that is not nailed down. Grasshoppers feed on fruits and nuts and don’t mind chewing on juicy stems, as well as beetles that chew on juicy stems nearby. Yes, they don’t even refuse carrion - experiments show that wets willingly gobble up raw pork and beef, and almost purr at the same time. Thanks to this ability, they managed to take on many ecological roles at once, causing island ecosystems to revolve around themselves. Like rodents, they control the growth of plants on the islands, preventing them from strangling each other. Like insectivores, they eat herbivorous insects, preventing them from destroying vegetation at the roots. Perfect balance on fragile chitinous shoulders. But even such a privileged position does not last forever. Europeans sailed to the islands on their pot-bellied ships, in the holds of which mice and rats were hiding. People began to cut down forests, plow fields and build the first cities, destroying the habitat of insects. And the rats and mice began to take away her bread from the weta. After all, not a single grasshopper, not even the largest one, can compare with an ordinary mouse. The ending of this story has not yet been written, but it is unlikely to be good. 10 out of 11 species of giant weta are in the Red Book, and their numbers continue to decline despite all the efforts of people. However, there is still a chance that New Zealanders will be able to reverse the situation. 🏀 Hit the hoop and get an NFT gift — https://t.me/BasketbolX_bot

ge. Then, about 18 million hectares of forest burned on the mainland and up to 1 billion vertebrate animals died. И если у многих из них были шансы спастись, то глупые и медлительные коалы гибли вместе со своими эвкалиптами, до последнего цепляясь в их ветви своими пальчиками. Australian scientists are trying their best to save koalas, but the chances are so-so. Koalas are not doomed, but they are in a difficult situation. Their fate directly depends on whether Australia stops the deforestation of eucalyptus forests and whether it can control forest fires. Author: Yaroslav Ilyin 🏀 Hit the hoop and get an NFT gift — https://t.me/BasketbolX_bot

Koala: Life is completely inadequate. The stupidity of this beast is beyond belief. But that's the advantage The koala could become the only marsupial monkey of its kind. It is perfectly adapted to life in the trees and has two opposable toes - an excellent basis for tool activity. And there are simply no other contenders for this title in Australia. But, unfortunately, she has one problem: the koala is impossibly stupid. The relative size of the koala's brain is as much as 60% smaller than that of other marsupials, and they are not very smart anyway. Besides, her brain is as smooth as a polished pebble. The cortex of his hemispheres is undeveloped, and there are no convolutions at all. As if that weren't enough, the koala is the only animal whose brain hangs out in its skull without completely filling it. And such deplorable characteristics of the brain lead to deplorable intellectual abilities. For example, koalas do not always realize that plucked eucalyptus leaves are just as edible as those growing on the tree. Therefore, they will not even feed from their hands. They often forget which tree they came from and can spend half an hour or an hour finding a familiar trunk and returning back. They are also not smart enough for social connections. Their maximum: this is the care of females for their children in the first six months after birth. Otherwise, koalas live on their own and avoid contact with each other outside of the mating season. After all, communication is too difficult for their scanty brains. And the stupidity of koalas is incurable. After all, it is a consequence of their diet. I'm sure you're well aware that koalas feed exclusively on eucalyptus leaves, which are not only low in calories and have very few nutrients. But they are also toxic, because essential oils and their metabolites (decomposition products in the body) are very dangerous to health in large quantities. Therefore, the koala's liver has to spend a lot of resources on the production of disinfecting enzymes. And although the animal copes, there are very few resources in the body’s possession. To survive on such a diet, the koala not only reduced its brain size, but seriously slowed down its metabolism. It is about 50% slower than the average mammal. The koala is so weak that it is forced to sleep 20 hours a day, fortunately the digestive system continues to extract crumbs of calories from the leaves even while the owner is sleeping. In this regard, the question arises: how is such a stupid and slow animal not yet extinct? But because no one needs him. The koala has no competitors for food and no natural enemies. Yes, it couldn’t be easier to catch, but the meat soaked in essential oils tastes unpleasant, so predators choose any other prey. And yet the koala is on the verge of extinction. Habitat destruction has greatly undermined its numbers and the species' ability to recover. And the Australian fires of 2019-2020 caused simply monstrous dama

nything against an ordinary strong net. Author: Yaroslav Ilyin 🏀 Hit the hoop and get an NFT gift — https://t.me/BasketbolX_bot

Arapaima: A fish that can withstand a shotgun blast. Her scales are like steel Why shoot fish with a shotgun is an open question, but the fact remains: from a distance of 20-30 meters the result will be near-zero. The pellets will simply bounce off the fish without causing any visible harm to it. After all, arapaima scales are a cool biocomposite, strong and resistant on the outside, but flexible and plastic on the inside. In terms of its characteristics, it is not inferior to the best impact-resistant plastics and some types of steel. But it’s not entirely clear why fish need such strong scales? Are they really trying to shoot her? No, no one is shooting at her, but they are trying to eat her. Yes, yes, this river miracle, from 2 to 4.5 meters long and weighing about 200 kilos, is still at risk. Well, what do you want, the Amazon basin is by no means a resort, the competition here is simply monstrous. And therefore, some piranhas will happily devour a huge but slow fish. But this won’t work with arapaima - they’ll break their teeth on it! Experiments show that piranha teeth crumble into dust before the first scratches appear on the scales of the Amazonian monster. But an arapaima can easily eat a piranha. She hides in the thickets of river vegetation, approaches her prey as quickly as possible, and then... opens her mouth! But it does it so quickly and sharply that the flow of water simply drags the poor fish into the mouth of the arapaima. Fast, effective and efficient. Arapaima is such a good hunter that it is capable of gaining mass at a monstrously fast pace. Already a year after birth, the arapaima weighs about 10 kilograms, and by the age of five it grows to 160 centimeters in length, after which it begins to lay eggs. And he does it with surprising care for such a monster. First, the female lays eggs in batches of about 500 eggs. And for each batch she digs her own hole in which they will lie in relative safety. And absolute safety is ensured by the male, who looks after the offspring in the first 3-4 months of their life. And no one in the entire Amazon can drive him away. And if, after everything you’ve read, it seems to you that arapaima is some kind of too strong fish, then you don’t think so. In its native habitat, it is still held back by harsh conditions and fierce competition from other species, but outside its boundaries nothing stops the fish. Arapaima have already penetrated into Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Guyana, as well as Southeast Asia - in total there are about 70 populations of angry and aggressively breeding fish that subjugate local ecosystems. And the people who took the fish from their home are to blame for this. Moreover, it is especially ironic that fish directly in the Amazon basin are on the verge of extinction. And people are to blame for this too. Local residents catch fish too actively and do not give them the opportunity to recuperate. After all, her vaunted impenetrable scales can't do a