The world's best has always been a topic of great interest to humans, so do you know what the longest creature in the world is? It is actually a group creature composed of a variety of living individuals, and has very slender tentacles and a unique ring-shaped organization;
Lurking for many kilometers on the seabed all year round, how was this creature discovered? In this issue, the Ziya Children's Fun Knowledge Bureau will take you to understand the secret of the tube jellyfish.
The longest creature
Speaking of the world's longest creature, many people's first impression is the blue whale, as the world's largest living creature, but also the ocean overlord, the 30-meter-long blue whale is naturally also pushed into the discussion of the longest creature.
There are also marine life enthusiasts who say that it is a giant octopus, and the octopus can reach a staggering length of 60 meters with open tentacles, which is naturally worthy of the nomination of the longest creature. It was also mentioned that there must be creatures in the ocean that are longer than these two.
After all, there are many possibilities for deep-sea creatures, and it may be possible that one day humans will find a fish that is longer than a blue whale, or other creatures.
However, in the field of natural science, facts have always been better than reasoning, and in the field that human science has already explored, whether it is a blue whale or an octopus, its body length is simply a small witch compared to a creature in the deep sea.
The story also begins with an exploration by scientists at the bottom of the sea. Not long ago, scientists from the Schmidt Institute of Oceanography discovered a strange creature in the waters off southern Australia.
At that time, scientists drove research vessels to stay on the surface of the Ningro Undersea Canyon in Australia, and researchers controlled remotely controlled unmanned submersibles to survey and explore in deep-sea canyons.
In the process, they accidentally discovered a huge creature that scientists thought was a blue whale, but according to the data sent back by the test instruments, the size of the organism was very different from that of the blue whale.
This result immediately aroused the interest of scientists. The random experts performed a 1:1 restoration based on the data transmitted back, and the result was a surprising discovery, and the creature found on the seabed excited all the scientists present.
It also allowed their research to achieve a breakthrough. So what exactly is the creature that scientists have found on the ocean floor? How does this creature excite scientists?
Uses of body length
According to experts, when the creature was discovered, the whole team thought it was just an ordinary whale, until the scientists compared and analyzed the data transmitted and found that the creature did not belong to fish.
The creature circled from the inside out into multiple concentric rings, and squirmed slowly along the ocean floor. According to the judgment of experts, such organisms should be a kind of tube jellyfish.
Pipe jellyfish are a group of many individuals, so the general tube jellyfish are very large. And the volume of tube jellyfish that experts found in the submarine canyons of Western Australia exceeded even the largest known record.
The outermost perimeter biota of the tube jellyfish has been observed to be 15 m in diameter, so the circumference of the outermost perimeter of the tube jellyfish alone has reached a staggering 47 m. Here to take the blue whale to make a comparison, the general blue whale length can reach more than 30 meters.
The outermost circumference of the tube jellyfish is more than 10 meters of blue whales, and there are some organisms in the inner circle of the tube jellyfish, so scientists predict that the length of the tube jellyfish can reach 110 meters, equivalent to the height of a skyscraper.
So what kind of creature is a tube jellyfish? How did it grow to be so long? In fact, the tube jellyfish cannot be called a single one, but should be given the concept of "group".
Tube jellyfish are spiny animals and are composed of seafloor biological groups such as jellyfish, hydras and coral groups, so tube jellyfish are strictly group organisms.
All germ cells of tube jellyfish originally originated from the same fertilized egg, but these cells gradually grew into different forms by absorbing nutrients from the mother, and the cells grew into multiple independent individuals.
These individuals did not break away from the mother after growing up, but continued to grow attached to the mother, and more and more individuals gradually formed a tube jellyfish group, so to some extent, the tube jellyfish is actually a platform for the coexistence of different organisms.
The beauty of symbiosis
But it is different from the general biological population. Common group coral groups, each individual is a coral of the same group, with the same food source and growth habits.
The tube jellyfish is different, it has a variety of different forms of individuals, each individual undertakes a different task, just like the various organs in the human body.
Individuals in tube jellyfish can also be called spores, which can be divided into zoospores and fixed spores according to their activity habits. A portion of the swimming spores are regularly arranged at the tip of the tube jellyfish.
The main task is to push the tube jellyfish forward through the regular contractions of the individual, and these zoospores have only this single function; Another type of zoospore has elongated tentacles that primarily capture food.
These foods are then transported to the mother. After introducing the swimming zoospores, some people will think about what is the function of those immovable spores? Do tube jellyfish have other special habits?
Tube jellyfish have two types of spores, the swimming spores are responsible for swimming and predation, while the other immovable spores mainly make up the rest of the tube jellyfish, responsible for the reproduction and growth of the jellyfish.
The two spores form a large population of tube jellyfish, and one is indispensable. Since the discovery of such tube jellyfish at the Schmidt Institute of Oceanography, it has sparked a heated discussion in the biological community. Do tube jellyfish belong to biological individuals or biological groups?
This is an interesting topic that seems difficult to answer according to traditional human biology. First, analyzed from the evolutionary history of tube jellyfish, all of its spores originate from the same fertilized egg.
If the division of the spores is regarded as cloning, then the tube jellyfish fertilized egg is the cloned embryo, and all the spores share a cloning source, so the tube jellyfish is indeed the basis of each individual.
It's just that in the long evolution, tube jellyfish need to constantly adapt to the deep-sea environment. In the harsh environment of the deep sea, the spores chose to coexist with the mother, which formed the group survival mode of tube jellyfish.
However, these spores have the ability to survive alone, so from a biological point of view, spores can also be called living individuals. Tube jellyfish are groups of life made up of multiple independent spore individuals.
But each of them has the ability to survive alone. However, in a complex environment, these swimming spore individuals are difficult to maintain a long period of survival, so they attach to the mother for reproduction and growth.
From the perspective of life habits, tube jellyfish are a huge group "spliced" by multiple independent individuals; But from the specific analysis of each individual, each individual has the ability to survive alone, so this also brings new challenges to biological experts.
In fact, from the perspective of human biology, it is temporarily impossible to define whether the tube jellyfish is an individual or a living group, but it is certain that the tube jellyfish is the longest known organism so far.
This is a huge discovery for biology and allows biologists to focus on an uncharted territory. Human beings have been groping forward in the exploration of nature, constantly discovering some creatures that have never been seen before.
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