The most desperate way to die is to fall into the whirlpool of death like an ant!
Circle after circle, without eating or drinking, no matter what happened in the outside world, deaf to deaf ears, like a demon stunned, only to spin in circles, until finally exhausted and died.
Recently, something similar happened to a variety of animals in the United States, at least 44 species of marine creatures participated, and collectively showed a strange "death spin", and finally died mysteriously, and scientists have not yet found the reason!
The first to be spotted was diver Gregg Furstenwerth, who in November 2023 spotted an unusual fish on the bottom of the Florida Keys:
Standing upside down and swimming in a constant rotation, first clockwise and then counterclockwise.
He thought the fish was "hilarious" and recorded it with his camera.
Later, when talking to other friends, he noticed that there were more and more similar circle events, and he realized that this might be a collective behavior, and began to seriously record the rotational behavior of these marine animals.
It was found that a wide range of creatures affected by the mysterious circle were found, including:
A wide variety of marine life such as needlefish, sardines, sand bass, groupers, rays and sharks, including the critically endangered small-toothed sawfish. Some time ago, he also saw a squid spinning in circles.
There is also a tendency for the location of the occurrence to spread.
As of March 24, 2024, a total of several hundred sightings have been received.
Initially the Circle of God was mainly concentrated on the 35-mile coast of the Lower Islands (part of the Florida Keys), and subsequent sightings were reported in Miami and other areas.
According to statistics, at least 44 species have been involved, and the specific death toll is unknown.
The most serious of the situation is the critically endangered Lesser Toothed Sawfish, where 109 were found to be circling and at least 28 have died, mostly large individuals ranging in length from 2.1 to 4.3 meters.
Unlike the death whirlpool of ants, it is also spinning, and ants are tired of spinning in circles, but most of these sea creatures behave abnormally after spinning, rushing ashore and running aground to die, and some have died before they go ashore.
What is the culprit of death in circles?
During the study, scientists found that when these fish were spinning in circles, they moved very strangely, and would stick their heads out of the water, sometimes floating up and sometimes sinking, giving people the feeling that they had lost their direction and had problems with their balance.
Therefore, it is speculated that these animals are unable to maintain their balance to perform handstands and sidestrokes, which eventually lead to spinning lap by circle.
In response to this symptom, the researchers listed a bunch of possible causes, such as toxic algal blooms, disease, parasites, environmental and climatic factors (low oxygen or high temperatures), marine pollutants, ......
"It is very difficult to find out the cause, but in order to reduce the loss of animal deaths, we have to race against time," the scientist said. In particular, the small-toothed sawfish, itself is an endangered species, and the death of more than a dozen small-toothed sawfish may affect the development and recovery of the species, and now there are almost 30 dead, which is very urgent!"
First, scientists performed autopsies on these dead individuals, ruling out the possibility that the animals had a contagious disease;
Secondly, environmental factors such as algal blooms, hypoxia, temperature, and pH value were excluded.
Certain algae grow in large numbers along the coast and do produce some toxins, but in the waters where the circling animals are found, there are no algal blooms and no toxins are detected in the water.
At the same time, scientists believe that factors such as low oxygen, high temperatures, and parasites are also not considered.
So, the direction of the scientist's investigation is aimed at the depths of the ocean.
At present, the most suspected is a benthic single-celled algae, Gambian algae.
Scientists took water samples from the area where the fish appeared and tested them, and found that the water was very high in gambian algae, containing about 1,000 algae per liter of seawater, compared to 30-40 algae per liter in other normal seas.
This group of algae contains ciguatera toxins, which are generally harmless to fish and marine organisms, but humans are more sensitive to this toxin.
When the reef fish eat the algae, ciguatoxins enter the fish as an acquired toxin, which is then passed along the food chain and enriched in the predators.
The distribution of toxins in fish is uneven, with the highest levels in the liver and the lowest levels in the muscles and bones.
Ciguatoxin is a neurotoxin that is said to be 100 times more toxic than tetrodotoxin and is not easily broken down by high temperatures, so even if it is cooked, it cannot remove the toxin, and stomach acid does not easily destroy it.
Once a person eats fish containing toxins, he will suffer from nausea and vomiting, mild motor paralysis, or even suffocation due to paralysis of respiratory muscles.
Is it also due to ciguatoxins that animals are showing neurological symptoms, hyperactivity, inability to maintain balance, and inability to discern directions?
In order to test this conjecture, scientists have also gone to great lengths.
Because this toxin is colorless, odorless, and indistinguishable to the naked eye, there is currently no rapid, effective, and standard detection method, and it is difficult to directly autopsy this toxin. It was finally detected, but it can't explain the problem, and many fish themselves have this toxin in their bodies.
Later, scientists chose to test the relationship between algae and circulars by collecting seawater from areas where the disease broke out and then rearing normal fish in it to see if there was a circling behavior.
At the moment, no results have been obtained.
At last
Americans are still most worried about the small-toothed sawfish, and scientists believe that the impact on the small-toothed sawfish is far more serious than imagined, and there is a risk of extinction.
There is a high probability that the carcass will sink after the death of the small-toothed sawfish, which means that it is difficult to count the true number of deaths of the small-toothed sawfish.
Now, for the first time, a joint effort has been carried out to save smalltoothed sawfish, which are temporarily housed in artificial facilities until the cause of the disease is found.