"Cats catch fish dogs eat meat, Ultraman fights little monsters". The nature of many creatures is innate, including the sheep we learned when we were young, the sheep eat grass, the wolf eats meat, etc., the life habits of many creatures have left a deep impression in our minds, but the habits of living things will change with the changes in the environment, are the ancestors of wolves and sheep meat and herbivorous from the beginning? Are the biological habits of wolves and sheep now what we see in textbooks? Friends can leave your opinion in the comment area. Historically, researchers have found that not only one biological habit has changed due to environmental reasons, but even eating habits have changed.
There is a common spiny animal in the waters of many tropical and subtropical coastal countries , the coral. Most species of coral are gregarious, often mistaken for plants because they are shaped like branches, and most corals are immovable and prey on by extending their tentacles, so Aristotle, who had just discovered this creature, thought that corals belonged to creatures that were between animals and plants. Corals usually feed on algae that perform photosynthesis, and some plankton are also one of their food sources. In the eyes of the average person, coral is definitely the most harmless plant-eating primary consumer.
Submarine coral reefs
But there are always exceptions, and two universities in Israel recently found a surprising change in coral feeding habits in the Red Sea corals, a coral called mushroom coral, unlike most types of corals, which do not live in groups with other corals, but live alone, and they do not settle on hard rocks, but swim around. Mushroom corals can introduce seawater into the body to expand the body, and then roll around with the impact of the waves, and sometimes can also move the body through their own tentacles, so they are also called "walking corals". But even so, they move quite slowly, usually only a few centimeters a day and are not easily noticed. Mushroom corals are similar in appearance to sea anemones, usually round or oval in shape, with a maximum diameter of about 50 cm.
Mushroom corals
In the course of the scholars' investigation, it was found that this coral would actually swallow the moon jellyfish in the Red Sea, and this is not an isolated case, most mushroom corals will hunt jellyfish. What is it that causes vegetarian corals to suddenly become carnivorous creatures? Researchers have found that the phenomenon of mushroom corals swallowing jellyfish changes according to the seasons, because the number of moon jellyfish in the Red Sea sea will have seasonal changes, in the season when the number of moon jellyfish is small, mushroom corals are no different from ordinary corals, but also feed on algae and plankton, but in the season when the number of moon jellyfish increases dramatically, they will become jellyfish hunters. Researchers believe that jellyfish or other fish have more protein than algae and plankton, so this change in feeding habits can make it easier for mushroom corals to go to the nutrients needed for survival and enhance their adaptability to environmental changes. For example, climate change or human interference, but the reason why mushroom corals prey on jellyfish is still an unsolved mystery, and researchers can only speculate that they may have adopted a hunting method similar to that of sea anemones, and the specific conclusions require more samples and time to study.
Due to the destruction of the ecological environment, mushroom corals were included in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species in 2008 and became a near-threatened species.