Camouflage is a special function of natural creatures, and in order to survive, it is really impossible to do without this ability.
Camouflage is also divided into several types, some camouflage by color, such as chameleons, snakes with similar back colors and dead leaves; some are camouflaged by morphological forms, such as leaf-tailed shougong, a gecko that resembles dead leaves, and bamboo worms.
Today, Xiaobian gives you the star of the imitation class, the horned cicada, as its name suggests, it has a protruding object similar to a helmet, and the form is different, which can be called the alien shape of the animal kingdom.
Let's first look at its "helmet" that killed Matt:
As we all know, many animals are camouflaged by foreign objects, what does it mean, that is, some creatures will install some non-their own things on the body to achieve camouflage effects, such as mud, leaves, or prey corpses.
For example, the bug hunter originally looked like this:
But in order to prey, it will carry the ant carcass on its body and use it to deceive other ants, and the camouflaged bug hunting will look like this:
For the master-level camouflage master horned cicada, the various helmets it wears are completely from itself.
Scientists have long been very interested in its back structure, with different shapes, some like thorns, like leaves, like ants, like wasps, and even like shrunken horns, a total of 3300 species of horned cicadas, almost different shapes.
I can't help but wonder, how do they do it?
Worn on the head, it is actually part of the chest, related to the wing gene.
Evolutionary biologists have long been confused about these "helmets" and how they have become so diverse.
Scientists have also given their own conjectures.
In 2011, Benjamin Plumm thought it was a modified, alienated wing structure, while scientists at Hokkaido University believed that this part of the structure was not a set of wings, but part of the chest, belonging to the dorsal plate of the front chest.
What exactly is it?
Three biologists at the University of Connecticut, led by Cera Fisher, analyzed the genetic data and concluded that the strange structure was part of the chest, not the wings, but still relied on the wing gene for growth.
Scientists collected tree cicadas and leafhoppers during growth, and compared the genetic material of all body parts such as wings, breasts, and special "helmets", and found that the genes used in the same parts of the tree cicadas and leafhoppers during growth were almost the same, and the development of special "helmets" was very similar to the expression of the corresponding genes of the wings.
So, although the "helmet" may not be a true wing, this proves that the wings and the helmet are genetically and developmentally related.
At last
Many people believe that the "helmet" of the horned cicada is completely imitating the surrounding environment, either to blend into the environment without being detected, or to warn predators to stay away from them, and the horned cicada in the shape of a wasp on the head may be to deter predators, but whether the helmet has other uses, researchers can not be sure.
Although it has been confirmed that this structure comes from the tree cicada itself, its cells look foreign, as if a "armor" that is not very related to the body is covered on the body, which is really magical.