What happens to the bones of a whale that is eaten by carnivorous fish? When a large whale dies, microorganisms in the body begin to breed and multiply, and when these microorganisms decompose the whale carcass, they will produce a large amount of putrefactive gas, so that the whale carcass floats on the surface of the sea.
The smell of decay will soon attract a large number of carrion-eating fish, such as sharks, squid, etc., who are "swimming scavengers" in the ocean, swimming quickly around the whale's carcass, constantly tearing the meat on the whale's body.
Soon the whale's abdomen will be bitten through, the putrefactive gas in the body will be dispersed, without the buoyancy effect of the gas, the whale will begin to sink, more scavenger fish will gather and gnaw the meat on the whale carcass clean, and when the whale falls to the bottom of the sea, only a corpse remains.
However, there is still a lot of protein left on this huge skeleton, and some of the meat stuck in the crevices of the bone can still attract a large number of marine life to eat, but these sea creatures are much smaller and opportunistic, such as crustaceans and polychaete worms.
These benthic scavengers live around the whale's skeleton for months to years, until the surface of the whale's skeleton is no longer nourished.
So does it mean that the feast of whale fall is over? Will the remaining skeleton stay at the bottom of the sea for a long time? The answer to the question is no.
In February 2002, Robert Frichenhoyer, a scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in the United States, spotted a fallen whale in a deep trench offshore. Piloting the remote-controlled submersible Tiburon, he found the gray whale skeleton on the undersea steps two kilometers down.
Despite being perfectly preserved, under the light of the Tiburon, the skeleton does not show the typical eggshell white. It is mossy gray and covered with a mysterious layer of red growths. When he got closer, Fretschhoyek found that the red was hundreds of red filaments that were slowly shaking.
He manipulated the submersible to bring back some samples of red filament, and after research, it was discovered that these were some underwater creatures, and a completely new species was discovered, which was named the bone-eating worm, a zombie worm that lives on bones.
The diversity of the fallen whale biota is high. An "oasis" may have as many as 200 species, and the bone-eating worm is so special that it can be said to stand out from the crowd. Because they feed on the bones of whales, their Latin name translates to "bone-eating slug"!
The bone-eating worm resembles a brightly colored, irregular, gel-like tissue the size of a fingernail, and looks like snot left on a tissue after a sneeze. The bone-eating worm stretches into the water like a slender stalk, oddly shaped and absorbs oxygen like gills.
The bone-eating worm has no mouth or digestive tract and, like its close relative, the giant tubeworm, relies on symbiotic bacteria to survive. But giant tube worms live by absorbing sulfides from hydrothermal vents, while bone-eating worms draw nutrients from whale bones.
Bone-eating worms secrete an enzyme that converts seawater into strong acids, which can corrode bones, while bone-eating worms' underside specific tendrils can suck out nutrients from the bones and deliver them to the bacteria in the bone-eating worms.
Colonies of bone-eating worms spread over whale skeletons, drilling tiny holes in them, they feed faster than bacteria alone, and it doesn't take long for the skeleton to begin to crumble and scatter on the ocean floor.
Bone-eating worms also have a very special phenomenon, that is, scientists have never caught male bone-eating worms, and after research, it was found that adult male bone-eating worms do not exist at all, and only females can grow to adulthood.
Male bone-eating worms are almost invisible to the naked eye and can only grow to the obstructed larval stage, where they are forced to become sperm-producing machines for females much larger than them.
A typical female will hold dozens of males around, protecting them and fertilizing their eggs. Males do not eat, they live their short lives on the yolk they carry at birth.
At first, biologists thought that bone-eating worms seemed to need falling whales to survive, and their specific functions seemed too specialized to take advantage of other food sources.
However, scientists have observed in the laboratory that these bone-eating worms will use the bones of cattle and seals to survive, and even more bizarrely, traces of these bone-eating worms have been found on fossils of birds in the prehistoric ocean.
Not only that, after scientists threw the bones of fish into the sea, they found that bone-eating worms would also gather and begin to decompose the bones and suck the nutrients inside. That is, bone-eating worms are interested in all bones that sink to the bottom of the sea.
How amazing is the cycle of nature, there are corresponding biological beings in each link, and if human beings destroy a certain link in the biological chain, then the ecological balance will be broken.
And some countries are doing this, they are killing cetaceans, and the result is that whale falls in the ocean are becoming less and less, and those marine life that live on whale falls will fall into famine, which will lead to fundamental changes in the ecosystem!
