What is the most terrifying place on Earth? For many people, it is not a cliff or anything like that, but a bottomless and vast, deep sea (I heard that many people have a deep-sea phobia). Although human beings have set their sights on space, and have landed on the moon and seen Mars, they still cannot reach the bottom of the deep sea. Due to the difficulty of access, the deep sea has always hidden many secrets in front of humans. At the same time, scientists have found that deep-sea creatures are generally huge in size in addition to strange growth.
According to the previous theories of scientists, the deep sea is dark, due to the lack of light, no photosynthesis, coupled with the main source of food from various biological corpses, the environment can be described as extremely harsh, deep-sea organisms should be very difficult to live, the size is relatively small. However, according to scientific research data, the creatures in the polar deep-sea environment are basically very large. Such as the 5-meter-long king squid, the giant sea spider with legs up to 25 centimeters, the 2-meter-long giant warthog squid, the 1-meter-tall giant sponge, and the mysterious and rare "Styx water mother".
Styx waterfish, like creatures from hell, have only been found 115 times in the last 100 years!
Styx (scientific name: stygiomedusa gigantea), the prefix "stygio" comes from the Greek word styx, styx (styx) is a river in Greek mythology that leads to the underworld. The suffix medusa, from Greek mythology, is a serpent-haired banshee who is often used in biology to refer to jellyfish. ps: In fact, the jellyfish does not have a Chinese name in China, the name "Styx WaterFish" was created by a god named "Orchidbear Orchid Bear".
The first discovery of Styx waterfish was in 1901, when British explorer Carsten Egeberg borchgrevink captured a 90-pound (about 40.8 kg) 36-foot (10.9 m) long giant jellyfish in the Antarctic, the first time humans have found such a giant jellyfish.
But from then until today, humans have only seen this jellyfish 115 times (I don't know if we found the same one). By looking at previous studies and records of jellyfish, scientists confirm that the species is widely distributed in the world's oceans, with the exception of the Arctic Ocean.
At present, the clearest image data of Styx waterfoam mainly comes from the Monterey Bay Institute (MBARI) in the United States. Despite its large size, Styx is rarely captured by cameras. During the 27 years that MBARI's deep-sea submersible (rov) patrolled the deep sea, they only observed this strange animal 7 times. Both are in the water depths of 750 meters to 2187 meters in the waters near the Gulf of Mexico, and the last encounter was in 2013.
Deep sea underworld, with 4 "long arms" up to 10 meters long!
Styx waterfish, belonging to the family Haemataceae, is one of the largest invertebrate predators in the deep sea of the world, and its habits are still poorly known.
However, from the existing videos and specimen data, it is different from ordinary jellyfish. In general, the structure of jellyfish has a variety of organs such as umbrella covers, tentacles, mouth and wrist, while Styx waterfish does not have umbrella edge tentacles. Instead, stygian water jellyfish has an extremely large mouth and wrist. Styx water jellyfish have a width of one meter and a mouth and wrist up to about 10 meters (epic jellyfish," right? ), like 4 long 'long arms' (some people think of it as curtains). It mainly inhabits depths of 1000-4000 meters below the sea surface.
Many students who have seen Harry Potter think that it is quite similar to the Dementors in the movie. Of course, a big "head" plus 4 long mouths and wrists floating in the ocean, how to see there is a sense of the villain boss's immediate vision.
The body color of styx waterfish is mainly black (brown) red, which is a camouflage in the deep sea. Because red light is quickly absorbed by seawater, while maroon does not emit light, it allows it to hide in the deep sea. Due to the lack of tentacles and those poisonous spines, researchers speculate that styx waterfish prey on the use of long mouths and wrists to wrap (wrap) plankton and small fish, and even its digestive process is suspected to occur in this narrow mouth and wrist. As for why Styx water jellyfish can grow so huge in the deep-sea environment where food is scarce, how to reproduce, etc., it is not known for the time being.
In addition, researchers suspect that there is a symbiotic relationship between the ocean extremely deep-sea fish (deep-sea fish) and styx water mother. Scholars from the Monterrey Institute photographed the two swimming together in the Gulf of Mexico in 2003. The fish swims forward, backwards, and even belly up, all the way around the jellyfish.
epilogue:
Jellyfish, as one of the oldest multi-organ creatures on earth. Although the structure is simple, it has survived in the unforgiving nature for at least 500-700 million years, and the variety is endless, which has to be amazing. Although humans are not exposed to Styx waterfish many times, the video images alone attract the curiosity of scientists. Because only by exploring and understanding can we better protect.
In fact, in the eyes of some historians and archaeologists, there has been a civilized world on the seabed, such as Atlantis, which was once rumored to be boiling. So far, though, we have not found or received unidentified signal waves from the deep ocean. But the deep sea is indeed shrouded in a veil of mystery, and I believe that with the development of human technology, the secrets of the deep sea will be revealed by human beings one by one.