Today is May Day International Labor Day, and labor is a glorious thing for people. In our human society, we advocate industriousness and despise laziness, and in order to honor those who are industrious, our country sets up a May Day labor medal every year.
So, are there also industrious and lazy animals in the animal kingdom? The answer is yes. It's just that the industriousness of the animal kingdom can't be defined by our human standards.
If you want to choose a model worker in the animal kingdom, it is a very difficult thing. This is because there are so many species in the animal kingdom, millions of insect species alone, and new species are described and named every day; and animals have different species and different lifestyles, so it is difficult to compare them together. Therefore, the selection of labor models in the animal kingdom is almost impossible.
If we have to evaluate, then we have to set a rough standard:
Criterion 1: Comparison of animals of the same class, such as mammal-to-mammal ratio, bird-to-bird ratio...
Criterion 2: The industriousness here is different from the "industriousness" of human beings, the diligence of the animal kingdom cannot add emotional color, in short, the industrious animals are not worthy of pride;
Criterion 3: Animal industriousness refers to the amount of activity relative to themselves, such as the distance they move, the number of hunts, the rate of metabolism, etc.
The main purpose here is to introduce the habits of these animals, and the topic of ranking must not be true.
Animal "industriousness" red list - bird labor model: Arctic terns
The Arctic Tern is a seabird belonging to the genus Tern. It inhabits swamps, coasts and other areas, and moves in groups, feeding on fish, crustaceans, etc. Distributed in the Arctic and nearby areas, it is a migratory bird that undergoes two summers a year, moving south from its northern breeding area to the ocean near Antarctica, and then moving north back to the breeding area, with a total journey of more than 40,000 kilometers, which is the longest migration route among known animals.
The Arctic Tern is a beautiful bird with a red beak and red feet, a grayish-white coat with a black hat, and a fashion model look. Its small body is less than 120 grams, but it has created a miracle in the history of bird migration. They need to fly more than 40,000 kilometers to go home (migration), which is equivalent to a circle around the equator, and is the longest migratory bird on Earth. In more than 30 years of their lifetime, arctic terns have traveled more than three times the distance between the Earth and the moon, and are truly the king of bird migration.
In 2010, scientists from Greenland, Denmark, the United States, the United Kingdom and Iceland formed a team of researchers to track the entire migration route of Arctic terns from one pole of the earth to the other using miniature GPS equipment provided by the British Antarctic Survey team, and found that these birds weighing only more than 100 grams completed a flight distance of up to 7,000 kilometers. The tracking device the researchers placed on Arctic terns weighing just 1.4 grams and mounted on their legs can record the intensity of light each day and the time of sunrise and sunset. Since the sunrise time and sunshine time of different latitudes and longitudes are always different, the software can be used to calculate the specific location of these birds every day. The results of the study show that Arctic terns flying to the South Pole either pass through the Coast of Africa or take the coast of Brazil, while when they fly back to the North Pole, they take the Atlantic Intermediate Route, which is in an "S" shape. Why would they rather take a detour than take the nearest route? The main reason for this is that Arctic terns rely on air currents, which are long distances but less labor-intensive downwinds. Another reason may be that Arctic terns migrate along the continental shelf, and the food variety is more abundant on the way, and they can replenish energy at any time.
Animal "industriousness" red list - bird labor model: hummingbird
Hummingbirds do not need to migrate as long distances as Arctic swallows, and the reason why they choose them as a labor model is that hummingbirds have fast or even fastest metabolic rates and ultra-fast flight speeds among birds. Hummingbirds are not a bird, but collectively known for nearly 400 species of birds in the family Hummingbirds. They share a common trait, being very small and resembling a bee. They are mainly distributed in Latin America and North America. There are no hummingbirds in China.
Hummingbirds have several "qualities" and diligence that fit perfectly. First of all, hummingbirds have an extremely high metabolic rate, and when flying, the heartbeat can reach 1000 beats per minute. In order to meet such a high energy consumption, they must "eat and eat", hummingbirds can eat food larger than their own weight every day, which is not common in the animal kingdom. Eating so much every day, but keeping your body so slim, it has to be said that people are "hardworking". Secondly, hummingbirds fly very fast, up to 90 kilometers per hour, and if you only look at the speed, it is not outstanding among birds. But you know, hummingbirds weigh more than 2.5-6.5 grams, the smallest is less than 2 grams, and the largest is only more than 20 grams. Therefore, this speed is based on the tiny size of the hummingbird, so the speed is already terrifying.
Animal "industriousness" red list - insect labor model: bees
The industriousness of bees is visible to the naked eye, and when we see bees, they are always busy, flying around in the flowers. Most of those who collect pollen are worker bees, which bear the burden of building nests, guarding, and feeding younger siblings. A worker bee is busy for about 10 hours a day. The reason why they chose to vote for the bees is that their industriousness carries a hint of sadness. The worker bee who is busy all day, but can't reproduce his own offspring, can be described as: "Several parts of the city have no self-share, and who is busy with a hard work?" ”
The bee colony is a mysterious organization, and the members of a hive are roughly divided into: queen bees, male bees, and worker bees. They perform their respective duties, are organized and disciplined. Among the bee colonies, the queen has the highest status, and its main task is to produce, which can lay 2,000 eggs per day. The colony only breeds a small number of male bees during a fixed period of time each year, and they only exist to mate with the queen and do nothing. The largest number of bees in the colony are worker bees, which are also females, but the ovaries are not well developed and cannot mate. Worker bees work the hardest, and they do all the work inside and outside the hive, such as nest building, feeding, cleaning, breeding queen and male bees, protecting the hive, and collecting pollen and nectar.
In this mysterious group, each worker bee works as hard as it can for the benefit of the entire group, and if necessary, gives its life. When the flowers bloom in the spring, the worker bees begin to collect pollen and nectar and breed more and more new bees, feeding as many as 30,000 young bees, accounting for almost one-third of the entire beehive. In late spring, the colonies begin to divide because they are too large. For this purpose, the worker bee first built a special royal chamber, and its chamber opening was suspended downward from the bottom of the hive. The number of royal families is about one or two dozen, and the larvae hatched from the royal family are fed the royal pulp throughout the developmental stage. The other hive larvae, on the other hand, feed the king pulp only the first three days and honey afterwards. The status between them is determined from birth. The larvae that feed the royal pulp will later develop into new queens. When a new queen begins pupating and enclosing the hive, the old queen and about half of the worker bees will fly out of the hive and temporarily gather in clumps on nearby branches. In the days that followed, the worker bees searched for an unused cave nearby, then built a nest to meet the queen bee. This is the mission of the worker bee throughout his life, going round and round, until the end of his life.
After talking about industrious animals, let's also take stock of those lazy animals, or adhere to the above principles, especially not to look at "laziness" with colored glasses.
Animal "industriousness" black list - lazy animal: sloth
Sloths are synonymous with "lazy" in mammals, and even the name bears the word "lazy". Sloths can be described as "lazy" worthy of the name, of which the best "lazy" should belong to the three-toed sloth.
Three-toed sloth is a mammal of the sloth family, sloth genus, the body length is generally 50-60 cm, the body hair is very rough, lifelong life in the tree, mainly distributed in Brazil, Suriname and Guyana and other places, feeding on young leaves and young shoots. The three-toed sloth often does not move for several hours, sleeps up to 15 hours a day, and even moss can grow on it. The three-toed sloth dares to be so lazy, but is still alive, mainly because it has an ultra-slow metabolic rate, winning the slow metabolic competition, and only consumes 162 kilojoules of energy per day.
Animal "industriousness" black list - lazy animal: trout
The sturgeon in the fish can be described as the representative of "laziness", and the "sturgeon" here is mainly male fish, and even the daughter-in-law is too lazy to look for it. On our planet, no matter what kind of creatures, procreation is always the top priority. Interestingly, for a long time, people found that the trout was female (such as the ugly sturgeon mentioned in this article, which is actually female), is this a "daughter country"?
Image from the web
When scientists began to study the sturgeon, they found that almost all of them were females, and there were some things on the body that looked like parasites. Later studies found that these "parasites" are actually extremely degraded male fish. The male fish attach to the female's body like a parasite. And sometimes there are several males on a female, which is a model of "polygamy".
The newly hatched male sturgeon already has a well-developed olfactory organ, which is, of course, necessary for them to complete their mission to find the female. In fact, the emergence of this breeding method is not surprising, after all, in the vast deep seabed, it is not easy to find a mate. The well-developed olfactory organs allow the male to detect the female's information hormones as quickly as possible and then find a lifetime meal ticket. When the female is found, the male bites the other's skin, releasing enzymes that digest the skin, and eventually the two fuse together at the vascular level. Over the next few days, the male's body slowly atrophied, first without digestive organs, then brain, heart and eyes, and finally a pair of reproductive glands to release sperm. This extreme hermaphroditic alien ensures the reproduction of the trout, and when the female is ready to spawn, sperm are waiting at any time.
As a result, the female squid never practices "monogamy", and it has been found that the female sturgeon with 8 seminal vesicles hanging on the side of the body - that is, it "married" 8 husbands. And these couples have a common destiny: life and death, honor and disgrace. This is the lucky male trout, and as for the fish that can't find a "wife" at all, it is even worse, if they can't find a "wife" for a few months, they will starve to death.
Producer: China Science Expo
Author: Zhao Xumao, a young researcher at Lanzhou University
The article only represents the views of the author and does not represent the position of the China Science Expo
This article was first published at the China Science Expo (kepubolan)
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