After the Glass

Posts Tagged 'Extraordinary Creatures'

A few days after posting the entry Life as we know NO, leading to my other case of a science fiction creature, a being capable of surviving many conditions that they would not mind. This is the tardigrades, also known as Water Bear, an animal so tough that some rank it as indestructible.

The name Tardigrada means "slow" and this invertebrate microscopic measuring between 0.1 and 1.2 millimeters was named in 1775, as I imagine you can, slow. But the amazing thing about this creature called "Water Bear" 3 years before its official discovery is neither slow nor that they lack circulatory, respiratory, and excretory most exciting is that it can survive almost any thing.
The tardigrades are able to dehydrate yourself from having 85% body water, only 3%. In this way, stunting their growth, reproduction and metabolism of staying in a state which can wake semiexistencia as if nothing past hundreds or thousands of years. In this way could avoid long periods in which environmental conditions were not conducive to its existence.
Is not this enough to catalog it as indestructible? Then wait there's more. It has been shown that Water Bear can survive temperatures between -272 º C to 149 º C, which can withstand immersion in alcohol or ether, which is not affected by pressure from the deep sea at 4,000 meters depth, or is able to survive the vacuum and the lack of any long trips in space and Russian scientists have found the rocket that had just arrived from outer space missions.
Nature is capricious, and the more powerful we believe more it tries to show us that we are not even remotely, the masters of the planet on which we live.

I must admit that I am a person that you are angry to read that scientists and experts such things as "there is no life there" or "not eligible for hosting life. What we know about those requirements? Is not it an act of immense egotism make statements such as we have not yet come to know even half of the forms of life on our tiny planet?

The Elysia chlorotica, a newly discovered sea slug, is capable of doing things that nobody ever thought he could make an animal. The animal has developed a complex combination of chemicals to develop, as do the algae, the chlorophyll pigment itself. This pigment gives the ability to create energy through photosynthesis and survive without other food in addition to solar energy.

This slug gets the chloroplasts of algae that eats at her young age, and stores the animal's own cells so that, in adulthood, no longer needs to eat or breathe.

We are witnessing the first animal that functions as a plant, a new milestone in nature that shows us once again that we have no idea of how all life on our planet and therefore we are unable to imagine how it could others operate in different environmental characteristics.

How many more things we need to discover to realize how ignorant we are?

Exists in the animal an animal that, when attacking their prey, do it with a jaws of free movement that make it seem out of his mouth another mouth. The pink goblin shark (Goblin shark) measures between two and three feet high and can be found in the western and eastern Atlantic, western Indian Ocean, Western Pacific Ocean from Japan to Australia.

Again a member of the family of sharks awakens our imagination in an impressive manner, and that none of you to see the video that I put below you will ignore the resemblance that is on its way to attack Alien film the creature.

Nothing further is known about this creature, you have done this video belongs to the first video images of a specimen are alive. Keep in mind that sharks inhabit our planet billions of years earlier than did the dinosaurs and has survived five mass extinctions in the history of life on our planet. By this I mean that, given how old they are and we barely know 5% of the creatures that inhabit our seas, it is quite possible that now that it seems that the technology begins to be used to discover that beneath the sea, to continue leaving us surprised and speechless because they are more than any other creature known to the living example of one of the biggest hits of the evolution of species. All this, of course, if our race fails in his stubborn determination to finish them.

The man in his eternal and stupid arrogance, thought to understand everything about our planet and life in general. Even in an act of arrogance, some "scientists" are saying it's impossible that there is life anywhere else than our battered blue planet.

Fortunately for us there is a group of scientists who still believe there is still much to discover on our own planet and is making one of the largest projects in exploring new ways of living history: The "Census of Marine Life."

The CVM, international project involving 344 scientists from 34 different nationalities, has just recorded 17,650 species, of which virtually all were unknown, the so-called twilight zone of seas and oceans. The twilight zone is located where no sunlight reaches, between 200 and 5,000 meters deep.

Have been discovered thousands of colorful invertebrates, corals and sea urchins are capable of surviving a kilometer below the sea surface. Of this amount include a new type creature octoped two feet long which they christened as Dumbo for their fins in the form of giant ears, a marine worm that ate was caught while crude oil in the Gulf of Mexico, or a larva transparent crawling on the seabed 2.6 miles from building on its many tentacles.

To give you an idea of what all this means you put this example: of the 680 specimens of copepods (a type of very small crustaceans maxilópodos) were collected only known seven.

Those responsible for the census described as "indescribable" the number of species discovered and have been assured it will be challenging to understand how it managed to survive such an immense variety of creatures in such tricky conditions.

To illustrate a little better I leave this post a video in which you can see some of the species discovered.

In northwest China has become one of those discoveries that serve to close many mouths and confirm old theories. He has discovered the oldest feathered creature known.

The fossils have been discovered are at least 10 million years older than those of Archeopteryx, with its 150 million years old, was until now the oldest feathered creature ever discovered. But this discovery is a particular creature that has left everyone with their mouths open. The named Anchiornis huxleyi has not been found just surprised more than one copy, but because one of them has found a state, according to its discoverers, spectacular. The plumage of this animal covers his body including his arms and legs.

Professor Xu Xing, author of the Nature magazine article which talks about the discovery, Anchiornis huxleyi has described as "a four-winged creature.

"Having found the first issue we thought it could be a close relative of birds. But then we find the second, which is completely covered with feathers beautifully preserved. Cover almost the entire skeleton. This is one of the most important species for which we have to understand the origin of birds and their ability to fly. "

There is currently a research team conducting anatomical studies to determine if the animal used its four feathered limbs to fly or if only I could plan for.

The Spielberg tito echoed in the film Jurassic Park, the theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs. Now, with this discovery, we are really about ensuring that this theory is absolutely true.