This article needs to be longer.
Huge free-floating coalitions of marine invertebrates known as pyrosomes have to move together to ensure the colony can feed and move in the right direction. They lack any common nerves to communicate, so they may have a different way to move in time – light signalling.
Pyrosomes are made up of hundreds or thousands of clones called zooids. The entire brightly lit colony sprouts from a single individual, and the zooids mesh themselves together as the colony grows outwards in concentric circles from a closed tip to an ever-widening mouth. When the colony is small it looks rather like a butterfly net. As it lengthens, it becomes more like a giant worm that can reach the length of a sperm whale.
Each zooid sucks in water from outside the colony and blows it out again the other side. This not only feeds them but creates a rudimentary jet engine to give them some control over where they drift to. But because they are made up of so many small zooids, coordinating their actions isn’t easy. Unpublished research from David Bennett then at Bangor University, UK, offers tentative evidence that this is where a pyrosome’s impressive light show comes in.
When a pyrosome is brushed by an external object, it lights up like a Christmas tree – in red or white depending on the species. The signal ripples through the individuals, and they respond by cutting off their engines. Just think of a second world war U-boat film. When the red lights start flashing, it’s time to dive.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27213-zoologger-hollow-marine-monsters-as-big-as-whales
... when I see articles such as this one, where we're just now coming to terms with yet another barely-understood life form, I don't know what comes over me. It's some sort of indescribable emotion, something Borges-ian. For all our exploration and investigation of distant worlds, most of our own world remains unexplored. We're busily wrecking our own planet - cutting down jungle, trawling the seas - those dodos and passenger pigeons must have been delicious. I won't wring my hands and weep over all that, though it is depressing - here's what gets me: it's inescapable - we're destroying species before we've even "discovered" them.
ReplyDelete"Nuestro destino no es espantoso por irreal: es espantoso porque es irreversible y de hierro." == Our fate is not horrible because it is unreal, it is horrible because it is irreversible, made of iron.