Deep Space Evolution: Clans

Chapter 55 Extreme Skin Animals
For Yuan, the creatures in the deep sea seem to be quite interesting.

There are creatures like him.High-end, all organs are fully equipped.

However, some creatures only maintain the instincts that a creature should have, just like a mere transmission tool of genes.

Yuan has seen a lot of advanced beings, so he won't feel that strange or surprised.

After all, after being cut open, the structures in their bodies are similar.

But when it came to those strange-looking creatures, Yuan became very curious.

Such as the extremely skinned echinoderms in the ocean.

Anyway, Yuan doesn't know why these guys can grow so ridiculously.

The ones that grow skinnier than the twins of spiny jellyfish belong to these echinoderms.

Without the evolutionary catalog, Yuan Zhen would never have thought that such a way of growth and development could exist.

simply speaking.

Take the starfish among the echinoderms, for example.

Starfish larvae do not directly develop into adult starfish. Instead, they grow into adults one after another by budding from the larvae.

When the adults mature, they will separate from the larvae and continue to live in the ocean, and the larvae will also wither as the adults fall off.

There are also some species of starfish that eat their own young.

This growth method is like an infant not growing directly into a 4-year-old child, but a 4-year-old child growing directly on the infant's body, and then growing and developing through the 4-year-old child.

Just weird.

Yuan also felt it was outrageous.

There is even a creature that looks very similar to a starfish. The memory in my mind shows that this thing seems to be called a brittle star.

Brittle stars are the same as starfish in that they both have several arms used for crawling, but the arms of brittle stars are much longer than those of starfish.

They are called snake tails simply because their arms and legs are as long as a snake's tail.

Although the growth method of brittle star larvae is the same as that of starfish, there are still certain differences between the two in terms of details.

At the same time, brittle stars have stronger self-healing capabilities than starfish.

When these guys encounter danger, they will choose to break off their arms to escape. In these two separate parts, the individual that has lost its arms will regrow its arms, and the lone arm can also grow into a brand new individual. .

This splits it into two.

And because brittle stars usually appear in groups.

Yuan's most exaggerated experience was when he encountered dozens of brittle stars piled together.

After tasting it, the evolutionary catalog told him that genetically speaking, these things were exactly the same creature.

Such a powerful self-healing ability made Yuan just sigh and want to transplant after eating it.

However, the transplanted area does not have the self-healing ability of brittle stars.

Currently, the only parts that can be transplanted in the evolutionary catalog are various biological tissues and organs, in short, various visible biological tissues.

But at the micro level, such as simply transplanting a certain genetic level, the evolutionary catalog is still not able to do it.

Yuan could only look at it with envy.

In addition to starfish and brittle stars, there are also echinoderms called sea urchins and sea cucumbers.

These echinoderms all share a very similar feature.

That is, they will spit out their digestive organs from the body, let their stomach digest the food outside, and then retract the stomach into the body to complete a meal.

Therefore, Yuan basically does not eat any digestive matter in the bodies of these echinoderms.Pretty clean.

Of course, in addition to these echinoderms, there is also an echinoderm called a crinoid.

Yuan doesn't know why this creature is called crinoid.

But I think lily should be the name of a plant on land.

Because crinoids are very similar to flowers on land, if Yuan hadn't taken a bite, he might not have thought that this thing turned out to be an animal.

There are two types of crinoids, one is stalked and the other is stalkless.

From the perspective of the survival advantage of the species, sessile crinoids can float with the sea water when they open their pinnae branches, while sessile crinoids can only find a base plate in the ocean to fix their bodies.

This biological habit of being fixed in place can easily lead to crinoid becoming food for various fish.

After all, this stuff is easy to eat.

Yuan suspected that sessile crinoids were born because their stalks were eaten by fish.

But this does not mean that stalked crinoid occupies a lower position in the marine food chain.

On the contrary, Yuan discovered the stalked crinoid in its growth stage in this deep sea.

They developed tiny arms and legs.

These arms cling to the seafloor bedrock, replacing the way the stalked crinoid's original body was fixed. At the same time, the existence of the arms also gives these stalked crinoids the ability to move.

These arms move the crinoid in the same way that brittle stars move.

However, because the crinoid's long handle may be a bit long, these arms may not be able to grasp it when moving.

However, I think this evolutionary model should be further improved in the future evolution.

After all, crinoids with arms and legs are not that common in this ocean.

Although the movement speed is still quite slow, it is undoubtedly a considerable improvement for creatures like Crinoids.

It is believed that these creatures should evolve more abilities to move in the ocean in the future.

However, as the Yuan progresses, the Yuan discovers the evolutionary stage of crinoids that seem to have appeared.

Those crinoids with larger "petals", thicker stalks, and thicker arms and legs have begun to actively hunt the small fish that once served as their food.

Although the movement speed of these crinoids, which are about 2 meters long, is not very fast, they are much better than their shorter counterparts in the deep sea!

And the way they hunt is actually pretty much the same as those of their kind.

Crinoids are filter feeders, and their feathery branches have many tentacles that prey on plankton in the ocean.

And these giant crinoids, their pinnae are more numerous and more lush.

When surrounded by dense pinnate branches, it will give fish the illusion that "this is a shelter".

Some fish that like to stay in sea anemones mistake these crinoids for sea anemones and enter them.

But the toxins in crinoids are different from those in sea anemones.

Fish that enter this dense mass of pinnae will be tortured by the strong paralyzing toxin released from those tentacles until they lose any ability to move.

After it is confirmed that the fish has lost its ability to move, the crinoid pinnae will slowly close up, forming a state similar to a digestive organ.

Then, the fish caught by the crinoid will be digested and eaten by the crinoid without being aware of it.

When these pinnae branches opened again, the fish inside had long disappeared.

(End of this chapter)