Earlier, the barnacles were not particularly familiar with the marine parasite, but as it entered the seafood market, it quickly became a household name.
In terms of appearance and taste alone, barnacles seem to belong to the same category as other shellfish in the seafood market, but this is not the case, because barnacles are not shellfish at all, but arthropods. What is an arthropod? The insects, spiders, and shrimp and crabs we are familiar with are arthropods. But unlike these arthropods, barnacles are parasitic, and the longest place to attach to it is the bottom of the ship, the offshore oil platform, and the submarine cable, in short, any object with a hard surface can be its attachment object. In addition to the barnacles attached to these places, barnacles are also fond of whales, such as humpback whales, right whales and gray whales as their favorite hosts.
So how do barnacles that don't seem to move attach to these moving objects?
Barnacles are a hermaphrodite, theoretically they can complete breeding on their own, but most of the time barnacles are allogeneic reproduction, a barnacles will insert a thin tube into another barnacles, and their sperm through this thin tube, when the barnacles eggs are successfully fertilized, a new barnacles are born, but the newborn barnacles are not at all like their parents, it takes several metamorphosis to become their parents. The original barnacles were plankton, after which they developed into arthomelets and then became adenomycotes. Adenoma larvae are a very special form of juvenile of barnacles.
The reason why the adenomas are a special juvenile form is because barnacles in this form do not need to eat, and their only task at this stage is to choose the appropriate attachment.
Barnacles have a certain ability to swim, but the main way they move is still by relying on the passive traction of the water flow, when they are carried by the water flow to an attachment, they are not in a hurry to bind to it, they will use their own small tentacles to move slowly on it, the purpose is to investigate whether the attachment meets their conditions, if it is determined that it is the "right person", they will use their own antennae to attach to the contact surface, but the attachment at this time is called "temporary paste", Because this attachment is very easy to move. The adenophiles will then further confirm whether the contact surface is suitable for attachment, and if so, it will undoubtedly convert the temporary paste into a permanent paste.
A barnacles that are permanently pasted with attachments will begin the last metamorphosis of its life, which is the transformation from a glandular larvae into a true barnacles.
After the completion of the last metamorphosis, the barnacles will release a liquid substance, which will form a colloid through assembly and cross-linking, and the attachment will become more firm, which is called "barnacles gum". This hermaphrodite creature reproduces very quickly, and once a small number of barnacles are attached somewhere, they quickly develop into a large piece, and the attachment of a large number of barnacles is not a good thing for all attachments. Barnacles on the bottom of the boat slow down the ship, barnacles on oil platforms increase its structural weight, and barnacles on submarine cables speed up their corrosion rate.
Barnacles are even more annoying to living creatures, and whales that are heavily attached to barnacles can be miserable.
So, the question is, why have killer whales almost never seen barnacles? Can barnacles also bully soft and fear hard, only dare to attack baleen whales, and dare not provoke fierce toothed whales? Of course not, because the blue whale, which is also a baleen whale, rarely has barnacles on its body, and the main objects of barnacles are humpback whales, right whales and gray whales. In fact, barnacles are also conditional in selecting a host, and this parasite has obvious "energy", that is, the higher the surface energy of the attachment, the more like the barnacles. So what substances have higher surfaces? Roughly speaking, the rougher the surface and the darker the color of the object, the higher the surface energy, and the more the barnacles are liked.
Humpback whales and right whales are both dark black, while gray whales are also darker in body color, so they are more favored by barnacles, while blue whales have a bluish body color, so they are not liked by barnacles.
Aren't killer whales also dark black? Yes, but color isn't the only factor. Killer whales can swim at a speed of more than 50 kilometers per hour, far from being comparable to humpback whales with a speed of only about 10 kilometers per hour, and the swimming ability of barnacles larvae is limited, so it is difficult to attach to the body of killer whales, and the size of killer whales is much smaller than that of several baleen whales, and barnacles are less likely to hit the target. It can be seen that in order to become the host of barnacles, at least three conditions must be met, the first is that the body is large enough, the second is the slow swimming speed, and the third is that the body color is darker. Among the three factors, the speed of the swim is the most important, of course, the speed of the ship is also very fast, but they always stop, so it is the barnacles.