Can you imagine a 30-meter-long stocking with a 1.8-meter-wide beak slowly squirming in the sea? It also sparkles from time to time.
Giant stockings – the Fire Bug
It's a little weird to think about, but don't be afraid, it's actually a plankton, the fire bug, because it's so rare, it's called the "unicorn of the sea" that most people have never heard of it. Or is it another cute name "sea kimchi", I wonder if the sea kimchi in "Minecraft" is based on the fire body worm?
The prototype of "Minecraft" sea kimchi
At the confluence of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, there is a "coral triangle" of thousands of islands. The waters are warm and there is a deep-sea basin up to 5,000 meters deep. The "unicorn of the sea" is hidden here.
Fire bugs
Pyrosoma sp.: The word is derived from the Greek word pyro, belonging to the genus Phosphorus Sea Sheath, shaped like a long bell.
It looked headless, finless, or even limbless, like a headless insect that had always been huge, only to be seen on closer inspection that it was a huge aggregate of thousands of zoospores.
Each tiny individual acts like a pump to provide water and nutrients to the organism, allowing the aggregate to survive. Fireworm colonies are plankton, which means their movements are largely controlled by currents, tides, and waves.
There is no way, since the size of the body does not have a "brain" and "hands and feet", it can only go with the flow.
In the big environment though it can only float around. But on a smaller scale, each group can move slowly through a process of jet propulsion, which is produced by the coordinated beating of the cilia in the gills of all individuals themselves, which also gives rise to a genre – feeding streams.
Small fireworms prefer to feed on smaller plankton, which allows them to learn a new skill of "jet propulsion", that is, by absorbing water to eat, and then discharging waste and excess water, by squeezing the opening to discharge the weak thrust provided by the seawater, moving in the direction of the closed mouth, so that they can move in the sea.
Swallowing and spitting, one retreating forward and one retreating is so well coordinated on this behemoth.
The giant mouth of the marine unicorn
In this way, using slow-motion "jet propulsion", this 1.8-meter-diameter opening is large enough to hold a person's opening to discharge filtered seawater, and each spit forward is no different from many marine organisms. It is only because of the overly large body, the cooperation of each tiny unit, so the movement is slow. As the ocean air currents drift, various twisted postures are presented.
Divers happen to encounter giant stocking fire bugs
< h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > Pyrosomes are considered torpedoes The creature that dragged the United States into the Vietnam War? </h1>
Is there still a misunderstanding about the Fire Worm?
Professor Todd Newbury learned in 1966 during a conversation with a naval sonar engineer assigned to service on the destroyer Turner Joy (who at the time participated in the Turner Joy and Maddox, known as the Gulf of Tonkin Incident). It was this encounter that plunged the United States into the decade-long Vietnam War.
The Pyrotechnic Worm is considered a torpedo The creature that dragged the United States into the Vietnam War?
At the time of the Turner Joy attack, sonar displays captured strangely shaped objects. They were about the same size as torpedoes, but they moved in a different way than the torpedoes that engineers had seen before. The engineer was convinced that the military might have mistakenly thought it had been attacked, and that the torpedo they insisted was actually some kind of creature.
When Professor Newbury was studying a little-known marine animal, the sea squirt, he heard the story and thought that this rare sea creature matched the description of the sonar soldiers. The culprit may be the mysterious close relative of the sea squirt, the giant fire worm. He believes that the swarms of fire insects on the surface of the ocean floating at night, because of their large bodies the size of torpedoes, resulted in sonar producing the same sonar image as torpedoes. The high-speed battleship made the Fire Worm uneasy, triggering its glow.
Professor Newbury said: "It was a misunderstanding, a mistake made by people who had never heard of the Fire Worm. It's irresistible, but the story needs to be told. "We don't know exactly what the truth is, but we can only hear it from the accounts of these scientists." Unexpectedly, the beautiful "ocean unicorn" also participated in such a story.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > beautiful white hot air cylinder in water</h1>
Among the many kinds of terrestrial creatures, there are only a few that are represented by fireflies. But in the ocean, most creatures can emit light. But such a large mobile glowing stocking is rare.
Describing the fire bugs, the scientist Thomas Henry Huxley said: "I just looked at the moon at the most beautiful time and looked at the smaller 'moons' – the beautiful pyrotechnic worms sparkled like white hot gas cylinders in the water. "
Fire bugs of different colors
These populations of fire insects are colorless, pink, light gray or blue-green.
Each fire bug contains a pair of luminous organs located close to the outer coat, each individual detects the light, and then emits the light, passing the light back and forth in the cluster, I pass you, you pass me, one glows, and the neighbors around it also glow in response. It emits a bright light, and finally forms a diffuse ripple of light, dazzling and colorful.
Such light stimuli are not only present internally, but for other animals in the ocean, the fire worm will also respond to each other with a glow. Bright light became the unique language of the fire insect. "After all, beauty is also to be appreciated by others."
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > the increase in the amount caused by warming? </h1>
Fireworms are obese and prefer warm water.
In 2017, the population of fire insects increased dramatically in the tropical regions from the Pacific coast of North America to Arctic Alaska, which some believe is due to the unusually warm water that appeared along the coastal areas more than in previous years. Fire bugs prefer to live in warm waters. Scientists worry that if a large number of fire insects die, the huge size of the fire insects will lead to a huge area of death, and decomposing their bodies may consume a lot of oxygen in the surrounding seawater, causing plants and animals to be unable to live, triggering an unknown butterfly effect.
Divers happen to meet marine unicorns
Cute "sea kimchi", mysterious "ocean unicorn", although strange-looking, open mouth, but has not yet heard of the behavior of attacking humans, if people who love diving are lucky enough to see it, don't miss this opportunity to play with it!