Wen | the whole point of science popularization
All living things in nature have to face the two ultimate problems of survival and reproduction, and in the cruel living environment, many organisms that are lucky enough to survive have evolved different reproductive strategies in order to be able to pass on their genes.
In the vast ocean there is such a fish, they not only have an ugly appearance, but also have an unusually strange way of reproduction, its male is the animal kingdom famous "soft rice master", all his life mating, and eventually become a female organ alive, the soft rice to eat to the extreme.
Sturgeon, also known as sea toad, toadfish, anglerfish, is one of the ugliest fish in the deep sea, mainly distributed in the shade of the Atlantic Ocean and Antarctic oceans, generally living between 2-500 meters, is a well-known carnivorous animal.
The body of the sturgeon is short and round, the head is large and flattened, with a huge crescent-shaped mouth, and the rows of sharp teeth are tilted inward; the body span is large, the largest is 1 meter, the smallest is less than 30 centimeters, and it is called "ugly fish" because of its ugly appearance.
Because their calls resemble the coughs of an old man, they are also known as "old man fish".
The sturgeon is not good at swimming, slow movement, but very like to ambush, prey can be said to be a hundred shots, is the "fishing master" in the ocean, individual species sometimes disguised as rocks motionless, leaning on the luminous organs of the back to attract prey to come and wait for the opportunity to prey.
In the deep sea, saving energy is the secret of survival, such a luminous organ can be called the "guiding light of the deep sea", whether it is preying, or attracting mates, the role is very large.
The combination of various strange organs of the squid is not exaggerated by humans to become ugly fish. However, although the sturgeon looks ugly, it tastes extremely delicious and is sought after by the majority of gourmets, and the only drawback is that the bones are too hard and easy to hurt.
In fact, this is not to blame them, the deep-sea environment is very harsh, there are relatively few creatures, known as the "desert in the ocean".
In order to cope with such an environment, most deep-sea creatures have unique survival skills, for example: many deep-sea creatures have an exaggerated mouth, sharp fangs and extra-large eyes, each feature is to adapt to the environment, ugly may also be an important survival skill.
However, people are most concerned not about the appearance of the trout, but about the way of survival and mating.
With the development of science and technology, human contact with deep-sea creatures is more and more frequent, and then also caused a lot of questions, as far as the sturgeon is concerned, scientists have found that the fishing of the catfish are female, according to the common sense of reproduction, it must be male and female mating, in order to have the next generation, then where did the male squid go?
In 1922, Icelandic biologists discovered a female sturgeon with two small fish attached to its abdomen, thinking it was her cub;
In 1924, another scientist discovered a female sturgeon with a small fish attached, and when dissecting the small fish, it was found that the small fish was not a cub at all, but their husband who ate soft rice.
Scientists studied further and found that this is their peculiar way of reproduction, which is very practical in harsh deep-sea environments.
Due to their solitary nature, in the dark and deep sea, it is difficult for them to meet their own kind, and it is difficult to reproduce through normal mating methods.
Therefore, the trout circumvented this defect through biological evolution, and the male trout attached to the female squid shortly after birth.
Young male sturgeon do not have the ability to survive, and more tragically, they will not grow up yet, and they will soon die in the deep sea alone, so they are born with developed olfactory organs to help find female sturgeon possession in a dark environment.
The two fish attached to each other gradually merge into one, slowly joined together, the male can only survive by sucking the blood of the female, improving the reproductive efficiency of the species, it can be said that they are mating all their lives, and the male eventually becomes an organ of the female.
Although the male finally has only a small body left, but compared to the fearful survival in the center of the harsh deep-sea environment, becoming part of the female's body is more real, not much like eating soft rice, more like a parasitic way of reproduction, not rare in the animal kingdom, many animals in order to reproduce their genes, will take some extraordinary measures.
In nature, the weak and the strong, the survival of the fittest, many creatures in order to reproduce as much as possible, in the mating will make great sacrifices, there are in order to breed lions that mate hundreds of times a day, and there are more mantises, spiders and so on that are eaten.
Responsible hippocampus dad
Puzzled people think that hippocampus is hermaphrodite, but in fact they are only responsible for the production and hatching of offspring by the male.
Female hippocampuses do not have a brood sac, and the responsibility for reproducing offspring falls on the male hippocampus father with a broodstock sac, and the female leaves as soon as she puts the egg into the male's body.
The bee that interprets love with life
Bees completely obey the queen bee in mating, the queen will release hormones to attract male bees to mate after sexual maturity, after mating is completed, the queen bees will close the tail in order to avoid sperm outflow, and the male peaks can only pull out the reproductive organs together with some internal organs, and will soon die.
These strange breeding behaviors actually have only one purpose, that is, to allow the species to continue, so that life on the earth can live and die, so the breeding method of the sturgeon is not surprising.
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