Post #14490

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