Have you ever seen an elephant chop up dirt? Ever seen a cute koala quietly eat stinking excrement?
We have the impression that elephants always have long noses rolled up and dangle fat bodies by the river to drink water and graze. As the largest creature on land, elephants are pure herbivores, and in order to supply energy to their huge bodies, elephants eat a lot of food a day. And these plants are rich in fiber, and it is not easy to digest such a large amount of fiber.
To solve the digestive problem, elephants have also evolved unique body structures. A group of microbes grow in the cecum of an elephant, and these small things can help elephants very well, digesting the accumulated plant fiber. But these microorganisms must survive in a salty environment, just like people can not survive normally without salt, these microorganisms are also, in order to add salt to the microorganisms in the body, elephants have to be "forced" to eat soil!
So, in order to feed the microbiome in the intestine, elephants spend their lives looking for salt-rich soil for long-term consumption. Among the elephants, if any elephant can find the land rich in salt, then it is expected to become the elephant king. Look, eating dirt is a "big thing like life"!
Elephants eat soil, which ultimately comes down to replenishing the salts the body needs, as well as some trace minerals. In fact, in addition to elephants, many herbivores will look for salt-rich and mineral soil to lick food, in order to replenish the nutrients needed by the body. Therefore, eating soil is not just a special hobby of elephants.
However, in fact, eating soil can be regarded as better! There's also a bunch of cute little koalas with "angel faces" whose food is really eye-popping – that's shit!
Koalas are also called koalas, koalas, and bears, and although they bear in their names, koalas are not real bears. Bears are carnivorous, while koalas are mammalian diplodonts. As the dumbest mammal, the koala spends almost its entire life in a tree, sleeping most of its life, eating when it wakes up, eating enough to continue sleeping, and sleeping for 18 hours a day!
Then everyone must wonder, why does the koala sleep so long a day? One is that the koala consumes a limited amount of food every day, and the energy obtained is not enough to support the koala to carry out other activities; the second is that the koala's brain capacity is too small to allow it to think at all. So, the koala is left with only sleep.
For the baby koalas, the mother will feed them until six months, after which the little koala will start learning to eat eucalyptus leaves. Eucalyptus leaves contain toxins and are very difficult to digest, and there are no bacteria in the koala that can break down eucalyptus leaves. At this time, the koala mother will secrete a semi-flowing digested eucalyptus leaf through the anus to act as a supplementary food for the little koala.
However, this complementary food that flows from the anus is not only very different from the composition of the feces, but also helps the koala to cultivate the gut bacteria needed to break down eucalyptus leaves, while also containing many proteins. Therefore, for the little koala, these "candy" are very nutritious.
When the little koala is about one year old, he will gradually leave his mother's nursery bag and slowly learn various life skills. When they can digest eucalyptus leaves on their own, they do not need the help of their mother's complementary food. Little koalas, naturally you can end this eating years!
In addition to being able to eat anything, there are many tricks in the animal kingdom to "die"!
Like the moth that always made people wonder when he was a child, he learned when he grew up that it was because the moth's visual organ was very strong, but when the artificial light source appeared, the moth flew at night, and its visual system would be chaotic. They originally wanted to avoid the light source, but due to physical failure, they finally rushed to the light source little by little, helplessly "committing suicide".
Not only are moths fighting fires, but grasshoppers also love to "gather crowds to dive and commit suicide".
This question has aroused the curiosity of many scientists, who after a long period of experimentation, finally found that there is a nematode parasitized in the body of the grasshopper, when they are still larvae, they quietly crawl into the body of the grasshopper. When the larvae reach a certain stage, they must survive and reproduce in the water, at which point the nematodes will "force" the grasshoppers to jump into the water.
Scientists have further discovered that grasshoppers produce a specific protein that controls the growth of central nervous cell cells and thus feels the rhythm of day and night. These nematodes are able to release elements that structurally mimic the specific proteins of grasshoppers. Fake proteins give the grasshopper's brain a kind of misinformation that makes the brain think that a particular protein already exists, so the brain receives the message. You won't synthesize proteins that are really useful. Without a useful specific protein, the grasshopper's central nervous system is destroyed, which in turn induces the grasshoppers to commit suicide by diving.
So. Grasshoppers Are "he kills" in the name of "suicide"!
The small creatures in nature are not as simple and cute as they seem, and their small bodies hide many behaviors that humans cannot understand, and they hide endless mysteries!
So, what other strange animal behaviors do you know? Please remember to let me know in the comments section!