Discovery Science 🧬

“Tentacles” on foals’ hooves: Why is this necessary? So, I don’t understand, where are the hooves? Is this a mutant foal that has developed Lafkrautian tentacles, a beast straight out of a horror movie? But no. No matter how strange (and disgusting) these processes may look, their presence is an absolute norm. So, imagine for a moment that you are a horse embryo, and you, like any normal embryo, plan to be born at the time set by nature. There's just one problem. Since the world is an extremely dangerous place, you need to learn to walk within the first hour after birth, and here you cannot do without hard and durable hooves. But if you start your journey through the birth canal right in keratin slippers, then it will most likely end badly for both you and your mother. Internal organs are extremely delicate and vulnerable, so one awkward move and your life’s journey will be interrupted before it even begins. But you don’t want that, right? And here shoe covers, scientifically called the hoof capsule or eponychium, come to your aid. In essence, these are just leathery growths, a shapeless mass of epithelial cells. It was the last to form, and only in the second half of pregnancy did normal structured epithelium begin to appear inside it. However, the eponychium itself persists until birth. And then it peels off and wears off in the first minutes of walking, thereby exposing the hidden hooves. After all, this is ordinary skin, soft and vulnerable. At the same time, the babies themselves feel only a slight itch. After all, there are practically no blood vessels or nerve endings in the hoof capsule. In this elegant way, nature solved two problems at once: it protected the mother and gave the child the opportunity to quickly get back on his feet. Moreover, this method is far from new; absolutely all ungulates have eponychium, except for whales (yes, whales are cetacean-ungulates!), which don’t need it! Author: Yaroslav Ilyin 🏀 Hit the hoop and get an NFT gift — https://t.me/BasketbolX_bot

Gorbatka: An abstract masterpiece. Why do these insects grow outgrowths of impossible shapes? At first glance, the humpback looks too strange even for the tricks of evolution. Well, why does a winged and practically weightless insect need huge, bulky outgrowths of a bizarre shape, which are also hollow inside? But, of course, everything is far from so simple. If humps didn’t help their humpbacks survive, insects would simply die out! The vast majority of humpbacks use them for banal camouflage. Sharp spines and wide protrusions are not at all similar to the natural forms of animals and easily confuse birds and insectivorous animals. Especially if the insect is painted in dim colors and hides in dense vegetation. But some went further: they decided to disguise themselves not as an abstract greenfly, but as biting insects: wasps and ants. Cyphonia clavata is especially successful in this, which looks like a red ant looming over a small green winged aphid. The whole scene turns out! And this performance attracts small predatory insects that do not risk entering into a fight with the ant. But humpbacks from the genus Umbonia have turned their camouflage outgrowths into powerful shields, with which females protect their offspring from predators, risking their own lives. Moreover, in the event of the death of their mother, the children will not remain orphans, but will be distributed among neighboring clutches, and their adoptive mothers will protect them as if they were their own. This tactic works great: the chances of survival for protected offspring are 2 times higher than for orphaned babies! However, we were not able to explain all the strange forms in this family. The Brazilian humpback, for example, carries a masterpiece of abstract art on her back, but we have no idea what it is for. Maybe it reminds predators of a dragonfly and scares them away? Maybe it serves as a kind of antenna that allows you to feel static electricity? Or maybe we just have to find the answer, and it will exceed all human expectations! Author: Yaroslav Ilyin 🏀 Hit the hoop and get an NFT gift — https://t.me/BasketbolX_bot

rs, is not a good idea. Among the few who are ready for such a hunt are little owls. To preserve the population, jerboas not only upgraded their hearing, but also their reproductive abilities. The female brings two litters of chicks per year, and each litter can contain from 2 to 6 ears. At such an accelerated pace, there is no talk of any long-term contribution to the offspring: they drank milk for a month - and go ahead, dig their own holes and develop their own piece of the desert. - - - - - 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 to VK’s failed policy towards authors, all this, unfortunately, rests only on rare advertising and your support. You can support the stability of our nervous system with a minimum subscription of 100 rubles per month. You can request support directly through the button in this post. Thank you! 🏀 Hit the hoop and get an NFT gift — https://t.me/BasketbolX_bot

Long-eared jerboa: Miracle from Mongolia. Predatory rodent with giant ears Hey, jerboa, why do you have such huge ears? What about the paws? What about the teeth? Wait, wait... What are you doing?! Leave this unfortunate grasshopper, you are a herbivore, a rodent after all! What do you mean no?! And that’s what it means, friends. Meet the long-eared jerboa, the most atypical representative of the rodent order. By the will of fate and evolution, he became so different from his relatives that he was included in the list of “100 animals that you must see before you die.” These are like wonders of the world, only made of wool. Look here: a tiny fluffy carcass the size of half a palm. On one side, a giant 15-centimeter thin tail-whip sticks out of it, and on the other, disproportionately huge ears. So that you understand: the body length of the jerboa is 9 centimeters, and the length of the ears is up to 6! And this whole strange structure rests on thin legs, like those of a kangaroo. Definitely, the animal is worth seeing in person at least once! To do this, go to China or Mongolia and wander into the desert. Of course, you won’t need 40 years, but you will have to wander for a long time. The jerboa spends most of the day in its hole, escaping the sizzling heat. But trying to dig an animal out of its shelter is useless. While we are gnawing out the best interest rate on the mortgage, our hero is gnawing out living space in the rocky desert soil with his teeth. But the jumper owns several minks at once. Some holes are transshipment holes, in case of a sudden attack by a predator. There the rodent awaits danger if it senses that it is being hunted. The second ones are larger - for daytime sleep. Still others are very large and deep, with underground rooms. This is for a comfortable time with the cubs and for hibernation. Moreover, each shelter is equipped with a back exit. In the event of a rogue, the animal will come out through the emergency hole and jump into the sunset. Therefore, it is best to look for the jerboa in the evening, closer to night. After sunset, the rodents get out of the bunker and make a walk around, or rather, jump around their territory. At the same time, the prey of the long-eared jerboa crawls onto the surface of the cooled sand, which means this is the ideal time for hunting! Yes, while other types of jerboas chew exclusively bark, twigs and skinny leaves of desert vegetation, our hero has changed his food orientation by 180°. He has become a predator! Its menu includes small insects and wasteland spiders. For rodents in general and jerboas in particular, this feature is, to put it mildly, not typical. Giant ears help the rodent find sand-scraping insects in pitch darkness. With them, the jerboa picks up danger signals - the jerboa itself is also an easy prey. True, almost no one catches him. Chasing through the desert after a shrewd little thing weighing 30 grams, most of which is on long bony legs and ea

Crocodile Watchman: We have been deceived since childhood. About brushing teeth for crocodiles Half a thousand years BC, the ancient Greek scientist Herodotus was busy describing everything: history, life of other countries and, of course, the habits of animals. One fine day he wrote a short essay about a crocodile guard - an African bird that is friends with crocodiles. He said that the bird feeds on meat from the teeth of crocodiles and warns them of danger. Thousands of years have passed since then, only monuments remain from the ancient Greek civilization, but the story of the bird is so firmly ingrained in people’s minds that it is called the crocodile bird in almost all European languages. What a pity that this story is a lie. Yes, the crocodile keeper actually lives in Africa and does spend a lot of time around crocodiles. But this is where the truth ends and fiction begins. The watchman calmly walks among the crocodiles not because he is a respected cleaner and an alarm system rolled into one. But because none of them will even move for 50 grams of bones and feathers. The watchman, in turn, does not care about crocodiles, because he does not feed on meat from their teeth, but on all sorts of small insects and worms that he digs up in the ground. And he hangs out on the beach not because of good company, but because he has a nest nearby. These birds very elegantly solved the problem of incubating eggs - they bury them directly in the sand, as a result of which the sun itself incubates the offspring, without any participation. True, sometimes it heats up too much, and then, in order to avoid frying the offspring, the birds have to plunge into the water and sit on the eggs. “But how come,” the most attentive of you will object, “you have half the article with photographs of birds walking on crocodile faces! It can’t be that they don’t interact in any way!” “As much as possible,” we will answer you. It’s just that the same Herodotus myth continues to live in the minds of people, and some take advantage of it. Take a closer look at the photos with crocodiles, they are all photoshopped! No exaggeration. There are no real photos of this bird in the mouth of a crocodile. We were duped. Well, life will never be the same again... Author: Yaroslav Ilyin 🏀 Hit the hoop and get an NFT gift — https://t.me/BasketbolX_bot

A selection of cool photos number 3 1. The Tasmanian devil opened his mouth very wide (only marsupial predators have the ability to open their mouths so wide!) 2. The evil shield-back is swollen because they left her behind... 3. Scoofy orangutan. 4. The snake eater eats a snake 😁 5. A predatory bug carries a mountain of bodies of ants it kills for camouflage. 6. The honey beetle stole a piece of the hive 😁😁 7. A male bird of paradise turned into an abstract something so that the girl would agree to a kiss... 8. Porpoise. This is a deep-sea and eerie creature of the echinoderm type. 9. Giant nightjar. He doesn't even have to do anything to be incredible! Please support with some reaction if you like this format of posts. Ave Honey Badger! 🏀 Hit the hoop and get an NFT gift — https://t.me/BasketbolX_bot

ountless modern, advanced species with more advanced anatomy were dying out, but these pasta monsters survived. Because more difficult does not mean more successful. If a Bathyphys clone dies, the colony will not suffer from this, it will simply grow a new one in its place. But we, complex people with a very sophisticated anatomy, will be able to grow at least one tooth in the place of the old one? Author: Arina Taran Editor: Elizaveta Isaeva 🏀 Hit the hoop and get an NFT gift — https://t.me/BasketbolX_bot

ate very much with such thrust, so bathyphyses can’t just pick up and sail away somewhere. They spend their entire lives in controlled drift across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, colonies are found only at great depths, from 1000 to 4000 meters. It's dark, cold, and there's nowhere to go Hanging from the sides of the bathyphys are thin, long spaghetti zooids called dactylozooids. These are the main breadwinners: they contain hundreds of small stinging harpoon cells with poison that react to the slightest movement. Their job is to locate, immobilize and transport prey to the center of the colony. Yes, this strange pasta monster is a predator! But to active hunting, he prefers to simply hang a bunch of dactylozooids and wait for at least something edible to swim nearby. Fish, crustacean, whatever - at great depths you don’t have to choose. Then the caught victim goes to the gastrozooid clones. This is the canteen of the entire colony. Since no clone is capable of digestion, gastrozooids supply them with nutrients. They digest food, break it down into nutrients and send them to other zooids. The most delicious job! At the edge of the colony there is a gonozooid clone, which is responsible for the reproduction of Bathyphys. Moreover, a clone has only one specific sex and, accordingly, produces either seed material or eggs. As the reproductive products mature, they are simply released into the environment without any ceremony. Moreover, many bathyphyses living nearby do this almost synchronously. Apparently, there is some specific trigger for the start of reproduction - warming water, a change in current, the presence of pheromones, or maybe all at once. Since only oil workers and deep-sea submersibles observe pasta monsters, this part of the life of a colonial organism is still hidden from us. And yet, since bathyphyses have not yet become extinct, it means that their reproduction is quite successful. Sex cells meet somewhere in the water column and merge into a zygote, from which a new colony will eventually grow, and the cycle will repeat again. And here a completely logical question may arise.Why complicate everything so much? Make some clones, invent different tasks for them, distribute the work, coordinate all this with each other? Why not just do it like we do - one organism and different organs inside it? Because siphonophores as an order appeared more than 600 million years ago. Then there was absolutely nothing on earth yet. Some strange algae, coelenterates, hydras and other very strange, asymmetrical creatures unusual for us were just hanging out in the water. Life then had just moved to the multicellular level and was simply experimenting. For this time, colonial organisms were super advanced, because they already had some specialization of individual parts of the body and an internal system. Strange, but still better than nothing at all. And this same strange system has helped siphonophores survive to this day. C