Now when asked whether a coral is an animal or a plant, many people still say it is a plant. Corals living in the sea are very beautiful, they have brilliant colors, and when they encounter a suitable gathering place, a large piece of coral will be derived, which does not move all year round, this phenomenon is indeed easy to make people think that it is an undersea plant.
The anemone is an animal in the coral class, which also looks like a plant, and some of the anemones look very good. They also rarely move, if people who do not know them see the anemone tentacles floating with the sea water on the seabed, they will feel that the plants under the sea grow strangely, even the leaves are so magical, they look really good.
In the East China Sea, the number of anemones on the Pacific side is very large, up to millions per square meter. Anemones also look different, but in general, they mostly grow symmetrically, and what looks like a plant leaf is their tentacle.
The anemone is a very simple animal of construction, it is an invertebrate, coelenterate phylum. In fact, they don't even have bones, no central information processing mechanisms, and no foundation for developing the lowest-level brains. That is, the animal has no brain, does not think, and only does things with the instinct to survive.
Tentacles grow around the mouth plate of the anemone, which are arranged from the inside to the outside, and the number is generally a multiple of six. Small anemones are only the size of grains of rice, and large anemone discs can reach a diameter of more than a meter. The average anemone is about ten centimeters in size and varies in size. The anemone's tentacles are their predatory weapons.
Scientists have found that each tentacle that surrounds a digestive system can determine whether the food it comes into contact with is suitable for consumption, but this judgment is not passed on to other tentacles.
During the experiment, a plastic shrimp is placed on the tentacle, and when the tentacle touches the plastic shrimp, the anemone grabs it, stays for a while and then puts it away. But when the plastic shrimp is placed on a different tentacle of the anemone, each tentacle reacts the same. This means that the anemone's tentacles can tell that plastic cannot be eaten, but it cannot tell this information to other tentacles.
This further illustrates that the survival of the anemone is thoughtless and instinctive. A tentacle instinctively grabs the prey and judges for itself whether to eat it or not to let it go. The scientists found that only when the food finally entered the digestive system did the other tentacles react, folding themselves and enclosing the food and sending it into the mouth for eating.
The anemone's nervous system is unable to discern any changes in its surroundings, and only when an object touches the anemone does it react when it is stimulated. When anemone is touched, many tentacles experience reflexive spasms, suggesting that the anemone has the ability to transmit some basic signals, but only the tentacles that are in direct contact with the object can respond.
This method of hunting is primitive and instinctive, fish, shrimp and shellfish swim to the side of the anemone, the anemone's tentacles react immediately, and do not need to be ordered by the central nerve like humans. When this tentacle has delivered the food into the digestive system, the other tentacles have received a signal to cooperate and avoid the loss of prey.
The diet of the anemone is very mixed, fish, shrimp and shellfish, crustaceans, mollusks, etc., are its food. It has a special spiny cell on its tentacles that releases toxins. When the tentacles grasp the prey, they inject toxins into the prey. The toxins of the sea anemones are very powerful. Studies have shown that the toxin of the anemone is a neurotoxin that takes only 0.02 seconds to launch the toxin. The sandstone anemones that grow in Bermuda are known as the most powerful biotoxins in the world.
There is a red sea anemone in the Bohai Sea of China, if stung by a red sea anemone, there will be dizziness, fatigue, redness and swelling of the wound, which is very dangerous in the ocean and there is a risk of drowning.
After catching the prey, the anemone really eats the prey and eats only the slag, and the fish does not have spit bones. Its digestive enzymes can digest most of its prey, and only some residue that really can't be digested is discharged from the mouth. Although this animal does not look dangerous to look at, it is not dangerous, who would have thought that it is a dangerous killer hidden in the sea, and it is still so fierce.
In general, anemones have no natural predators in the sea, mainly because most animals do not eat this animal. And when the anemone encounters an attack, it will all retract the mouth plate and tentacles into the body, and it is difficult to retract it easily and then extend, and the process of extending takes two or three hours. In the process, the attackers often gave up, and the anemones managed to get out of trouble.
But anemones will attack their kind, even to kill each other. It has been observed that if anemone encounters anemone of the same breeding line, the two will gradually extend their tentacles to join hands, like a friend shaking hands. If it is a different breeding line, it will try to kill the other party and inject venom into the other party. After a few rounds, the weaker side will try to escape, using the flow of the sea to wash itself away or move slowly. If you don't flee, you can only withstand the attack until you are killed by the other party.
They cannot tolerate their kind, but they can tolerate some fish and shrimp and their symbiosis. These fish and shrimp are often self-protective, they hide in the tentacles of the anemone, the anemone protects them, and they attract food for the anemone. Each anemone generally has a symbiotic relationship with three to seven fish and shrimp.
In the end, it is still to survive better. Attacking with the same kind is to compete for survival resources, and the willingness to coexist with fish and shrimp is also to continuously obtain food.
Scientists have also found that the lifespan of anemones is the longest-lived marine animal in the world. The test found that 3 anemones from the deep sea were aged 1500-2100 years old. They even live longer than turtles and corals.
At the bottom of the sea, what may seem least dangerous is the most dangerous.