Post by rachelcarson1953 on May 19, 2021 23:18:02 GMT
I know full well that I am going to catch a lot of crap, as it were, for posting this, but it really is an interesting article about evolution.
www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-body-s-most-embarrassing-organ-is-an-evolutionary-marvel/ar-BB1gSCuc?ocid=msedgdhp
Just a teaser, the rest of the article is long and really interesting.
The sea cucumber's posterior is so much more than an exit hole for digestive waste. It is also a makeshift mouth that gobbles up bits of algae; a faux lung, latticed with tubes that exchange gas with the surrounding water; and a weapon that, in the presence of danger, can launch a sticky, stringy web of internal organs to entangle predators. It can even, on occasion, be a home for shimmering pearlfish, which wriggle inside the bum when it billows open to breathe. It would not be inaccurate to describe a sea cucumber as an extraordinary anus that just so happens to have a body around it. As Rebecca Helm, a jellyfish biologist at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, told me, “It is just a really great butt.”
www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-body-s-most-embarrassing-organ-is-an-evolutionary-marvel/ar-BB1gSCuc?ocid=msedgdhp
Just a teaser, the rest of the article is long and really interesting.
The sea cucumber's posterior is so much more than an exit hole for digestive waste. It is also a makeshift mouth that gobbles up bits of algae; a faux lung, latticed with tubes that exchange gas with the surrounding water; and a weapon that, in the presence of danger, can launch a sticky, stringy web of internal organs to entangle predators. It can even, on occasion, be a home for shimmering pearlfish, which wriggle inside the bum when it billows open to breathe. It would not be inaccurate to describe a sea cucumber as an extraordinary anus that just so happens to have a body around it. As Rebecca Helm, a jellyfish biologist at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, told me, “It is just a really great butt.”
