There is such a magical fish in Africa, with a strong ability to survive. Even if the 6-month-long dry season completely dries up the riverbed, they can find another way to survive by digging holes in the ground for several years.
African steppe
Born in the dirt, growing up to shuttle back and forth between the water and the underground, the vitality is simply amazing, what kind of fish is it? It's the African lungfish.
What kind of fish is the African lungfish? What's so special about the African lungfish? And how were African lungfish discovered by the African people? Why are most African lungfish unable to escape their tragic fate? Let's walk into this amazing creature today.
The African lungfish hid deep underground, defeated hunger and water shortage, and could live for many years, but finally because of human excavation, life ended.
African lungfish hidden in the dirt
An African lungfish that was never understood
In fact, African lungfish eat everything, are omnivores, they eat small fish and shrimp, crustaceans, molluscs also eat, including worms, aquatic insects and larvae living in water. The African lungfish doesn't just eat meat, but the aquatic plants and the roots buried in the mud are also its meals.
In addition, African lungfish are oviparous fish, they will breed every year during the rainy season, the female fish lay the eggs into the built mud nest, the egg's gelatinous membrane plays a protective and nutritious role. The male acts as a "bodyguard" during the spawning period of the female, allowing the eggs to hatch into small fry.
African lungfish are omnivorous
African lungfish prefer to live in swamps, lakes, rivers and other water bodies in the tropics. Because the tropics are divided into dry and rainy seasons, they will dig up the silt of the riverbed in the rivers that are about to dry up before the dry season comes, and make themselves a cave where they can sleep.
The cave's role is to help African lungfish survive the 6-month dry season. Do you see them struggling to make holes in the muddy riverbed, is there a similarity with loach and yellow eel? It's just that the African lungfish look much fatter.
In such a drought situation, the lungfish can still survive
If the category of "phylloscopes" is to be classified as "phylloscopes", the broad African lungfish can be defined as the Biplanetary lungfish family of the biplanetary lungfish order in the order of chordates under the chordate phylum of the animal kingdom. African lungfish are also known as tabby lungfish or blunt-snouted lungfish. There are four species of African lungfish, namely East African lungfish, protofin fish, stone-flowered lungfish, and long-lungfish.
Lungfish sticking their heads out of the mud
Let's take a closer look at these 4 species of African lungfish.
East African lungfish and protofin fish are important local food fish, and East African lungfish are relatively small in size, and the main production areas are distributed in The Rudolf Lake, Lake Tanganikao and zambezi River basins in eastern Africa. The original finfish are mainly distributed in swamps, lakes and rivers in central and western Africa.
Protofin fish
Long-lunged fish, listening to the name, you know that it is characterized by a long body, and the home of the long-lunged fish is in the middle and lower reaches of the Congo River, and is distributed in Congo, Gabon, Central Africa and other places. Stone-flowered lungfish are concentrated in two connected lakes in eastern and central Africa, Lake Victoria and Lake Tanganyika, and petrified lungfish live in the dense river network connecting the two lakes.
The African lungfish is an ancient and special fish that is known as one of the most vigorous fish in the world because it can survive in dry environments with scarce water. So what's so special about the African lungfish?
Plants also struggle to survive in arid environments
Special body structure
Like regular fish, African lungfish can breathe in the water with their gills. But it also has a special swim bladder that allows African lungfish to breathe away from water, so it has the ability to withstand arid climates. This particular fish maw structure of the African lungfish is somewhat similar to the structure of the lungs of land animals:
The anterior part of the swim bladder is integrated into a single space, which is very short in length, and then splits in two, all the way to the tail of the body cavity; the inner wall of the middle part of the swim bladder has small air chambers of different sizes that play a filtering role, equivalent to the alveoli of animals. These small air chambers can continue to be subdivided, in fact, they are composed of more small air bags.
Fish breathe in the water with gills
So how do African lungfish use their special swim bladders to survive the 6-month dry season?
When temperatures rise, precipitation decreases, and rivers enter a dry period of the year, The African lungfish burrow into the wet silt and dig a small hole that just fits its own size. In order to prevent the skin of the fish from drying out, they will secrete mucus to envelop the whole body, locking in the surface of the body, leaving only a small hole for breathing.
Structure of fish
The African lungfish stays underground, using its accumulated fat as nutrients to maintain its life, and it can adjust its metabolic rate to 1/60 of the original, which translates into a percentage, but 2% of the normal level.
It can be seen that this is a kind of intelligent fish that knows how to be guided by the situation and knows the way to survive, which is also thanks to the ancestors of the African lungfish, who have the ability to survive in the harsh environment in the long evolution, and nature is so magical.
African lungfish survive by burrowing in the ground
Since the African lungfish hide underground in order to avoid the dry season, up to 6 months will not be able to get out of the door, but also through their own fat survival, metabolism can be adjusted to a very slow consumption rate, African lungfish should be quite safe, why can not escape human excavation?
Accidental discovery of African lungfish
In fact, the people of Africa discovered this amazing fish buried in the deep soil because of the accidental harvest of excavating groundwater.
People dig wells to obtain groundwater
It's not just The African lungfish that don't have a hard time during the dry season in Africa, but the African people also have to worry about the lack of water. But how can humans have the magical body structure of the African lungfish, humans can not evolve the ability to secrete mucus to retain water, and can not rely on only a small hole to breathe. Therefore, African humans face the gradually drying riverbed and pin their hopes for water sources on the excavation of groundwater.
Africa is desperately short of water
Do not dig do not know, a dig of the African lungfish home to the end, people did not expect that under the cracked riverbed, those hard into the stone of the soil, actually found full of protein lungfish. In this way, the African lungfish was discovered by Africans who excavated groundwater. In some less developed parts of Africa, such as Uganda, the African lungfish has become an important food fish.
In order to dig out more of these African lungfish that grow in the soil, people began to sum up their experience, and they found that the reason why African lungfish can survive underground for so long is because smart African lungfish will leave a small hole to achieve underground ventilation, so people can find lungfish through this "mark".
Dig out a bunch of fish in the soil
African lungfish have been living in the soil for a long time, digging out a smell of earth, which is not good-looking. But the African lungfish grows amazingly, it can grow to 1 meter long, the weight can reach 10 kilograms, and a lungfish can manage a family, why not? African lungfish are not as fleshy as marine fish, and their bodies are always muddy and muddy, which is not popular, but for some resource-poor areas, it is enough to fill their stomachs.
The most unfortunate thing about the African lungfish is not that the people who dig the groundwater are dug out of the mud and made into a grilled fish and served to the table, but they are not found at all, and they are sealed in the walls of the mud house. What's going on here?
Grilled fish in coarse salt
African lungfish in the wall
Some primitive tribes in Africa liked to build houses out of silt from riverbeds, which was easy to shape and strong when dried. For primitive tribesmen, it was very convenient to build houses with mud walls, they did not need houses made of reinforced concrete, nor did they need to carry heavy stones to pile up houses. But they didn't know that the silt in the riverbed still contained some dormant African lungfish.
The African lungfish hiding in the mud are sealed in the walls
They were transported to land along with the silt, and in the hands of the tribesmen, the silt and the haystacks were shaped into walls, and the African lungfish were "sealed" in the walls without anyone noticing. So will the lungfish never wake up, become part of the wall, and eventually form a lungfish fossil?
In fact, the lungfish have only entered a dormant state, and it has been said before that the lungfish can live without eating or drinking for five or six years, and as long as the rainy season comes, the lungfish will be awakened. These mud walls can not withstand the wash of rain, African lungfish will be stripped from the disintegrated mud walls, along the rainwater into potholes, mud swamps, and when the rainy season after the dry season comes again, they will repeat the previous underground life, this is the life of the African lungfish.
The body of the African lungfish is very long
Magical biological world
Despite all the difficulties, African lungfish are also trying to adapt to changes in the environment, and organisms need to constantly adapt to the environment if they want to survive for a long time. The environment gives lungfish the ability to live amphibiously, even if the river becomes dryland and the rainy season becomes dry season, the lungfish can survive tenaciously.
The Creator only created all species and did not tell them how to adapt to the environment, so the species that can often survive in the worse the environment are the more fully evolved. Thanks to the magical biological world, let us witness the wonder of species, the beauty of species.