The forms of life are strange, different creatures have their own unique way of survival, those who stand at the top of the food chain walk in the sun, as far as the eye can see are their own rations. And those fragile or low-level creatures can only hide in the shadows, and if they are not careful, they will become the food on the plate of others.
Humans are visual animals, so the appearance and color of food has a great impact on people's appetite, often bright and bright food is more likely to attract everyone to eat, and some ugly or even disgusting food is often avoided. Of course, there is always no shortage of warriors in life who dare to challenge, and they often take the lead in trying different ingredients and strange dishes, leading everyone to challenge the limits of taste buds.
In temperate and tropical marine areas, there is such a strange creature, their slender and tubular body, up to 180 cm long, but also like to feed on the dockside stakes and wooden boats, posing a great threat to the fishermen's boat equipment, they are chiseled shellfish, and there is a suitable nickname - maggots, their appearance may be difficult for many people to accept, but in the local area is a food that everyone competes for.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > the origin and introduction of the name of the maggot</h1>
Ship maggots have thin white shells that resemble giant maggots, and this strange creature was first discovered at the bottom of wooden boats. Maggots that feed on wood often eat fishermen's planks, and no matter how hard and thick the quality of wood can not stop their pace, resulting in many underwater wooden buildings and wooden hulls being hollowed out, threatening people's lives and safety, which is also the origin of the name maggot.
Although these maggots look disgusting, in fact, ship maggots are not maggots, from the name of the chiseled ship shell, you can guess that they are a kind of shellfish, that is, seafood. Compared with the strange creatures on the seabed that look more "freewheeling", ship maggots are relatively beautiful, and it may not be so difficult to swallow for ship maggots. Ship maggots are extremely fertile, laying more than 5 million eggs a year, and the fastest time from hatching to sexual maturity is only one month, which is why they are still abundant in the face of locals competing to catch and eat.
After hatching in the sea, the maggots drift with the sea, attach to the wood, and begin to drill the wood. Ship maggots will rotate 8-12 times per minute when drilling into the wood, and use the shell of the body to grind the wood down as their own food, because the ship maggots live in the wood for a long time, and constantly dig deep into the wood, but they need to maintain contact with the sea to obtain oxygen and moisture, so the body will evolve into a slender look, as shellfish they have become the best hiding place because of the wood they live in, so they do not have to rely on hard shells to protect themselves like other shellfish. The original hard shell slowly degenerated into a very small toothed shell at the end of the body, which was used to dig wood and block the opening of the hole.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > soft body can even chew stones</h1>
There are few stone-eating creatures in nature, except for some microorganisms, most of which are chewed on stones for the purpose of helping digestion, such as elephants, chickens, some birds and so on. But scientists have recently discovered a diamond-headed ship maggot in the Abatan River in the Philippines, also known locally as "stone-eating insects," which are completely different from those that drill wood, living in river areas rather than oceans, and specializing in eating stones, which are the only creatures known to nibble on stones and excrete fine sand. Of course, they don't really get nutrients from the stones, because scientists have found that all ship maggots feed and breathe through the water, and why the "stone-eating insects" in the Philippines eat stones is still an unsolved mystery.
<h1 class = pgc-h-arrow-right > the of a thousand miles collapses in the ant nest, and the destructive ability of ship maggots is no less than that of ants</h1>
Ship maggots, though soft as worms, can wreak havoc on wooden dock stakes and wooden hulls. Ship maggots were first recorded in 350 BC, when the ancient Greeks and Romans hated it but were tortured, and could only ensure the safety of the ship by constantly replacing and reinforcing the bottom of the ship, about 3,000 years ago, asphalt and wax and other materials were used to apply to the bottom of the ship to resist the erosion of the maggots, and even the famous Columbus was forced to temporarily go ashore for repairs during sailing.
The most "bullish" record of ship maggots may be that they have changed the economic and military direction of Europe. In 1588, ship maggots helped the British defeat the then invincible Spanish Armada, allowing the British to dominate the Atlantic. The early commercially developed Netherlands mainly relied on merchant ships to transport goods and trade, but the Netherlands, which used wood as the main material, was tormented by ship maggots, and often had dock destruction or shipwrecks, resulting in the gradual decline of the Dutch shipbuilding industry and commerce. In the United States in 1997 and 2000, there were also inexplicable collapses at the Brooklyn docks in New York and the docks in Maine, resulting in many people falling into the water and being injured, and it was eventually found that the culprit was the maggot.
Of course, fishermen and researchers, plagued by ship maggots, have been trying to deal with them. In addition to asphalt and wax, they also wrapped the hull with cowhide and copper plates, although the effective cost was too expensive, and even tried to kill maggots with high and low temperatures, although the effect was good, but it would cause different degrees of damage to the hull. It was only in modern times that chemical methods were used to eliminate ship maggots, but while protecting ships, they often polluted the oceans.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > "dark cuisine" that everything is edible and expensive</h1>
Durian and stinky tofu are very familiar foods, and although they don't smell good, they are really fragrant! In the eyes of people, not only eat wood and stones, causing a lot of hidden dangers, coupled with their rarely appreciated appearance, they will not think of eating it at all, but in Thailand and the Philippines and other regions, ship maggots are expensive food, the price per kilogram is about 1,000 baht, with the income level of the locals still competing to buy and eat, it can be seen that the popularity of ship maggots in the locals is definitely beyond our imagination. They will even often take boats in groups to swampy rotten wood and other places where maggots often appear, and whenever they find rotten wood suspected of hiding maggots, they will split the rotten wood and pull out a slender maggot, and the more daring people will even use the stream to simply wash the maggots and eat them directly raw, in their eyes, the ship maggots are an aphrodisiac, and they also think that the effect of raw food is the best. In addition to eating raw, ship maggots have also been made into a variety of "Thai dark dishes", whether it is fried, stir-fried, Sichuan hot and other cuisines are quite popular in the local area. The difficult creatures in the eyes of so many people have been simply and rudely suppressed by the people of Southeast Asia, and it is precisely this: Sun Wukong borrowed a banana fan, and one thing dropped one thing.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > concluding remarks</h1>
All things exist is the truth, and most of today's ships are made of metal to build their hulls, avoiding the potential threat of maggots. But there are still some developing countries that still use wooden boats as the main means of transport and fishing, although maggots have caused serious damage to docks and ships, but they have provided ideas for human beings to dig subway tunnels, and also provided locals with a special cuisine, which is also a kind of compensation.