The Strangest Things in the World: A Book About Extraordinary Manifestations of NatureHenry, Thomas R. (Thomas Robert)
History
The Strangest Things in the World: A Book About Extraordinary Manifestations of Nature
Henry, Thomas R. (Thomas Robert)
Animal behavior; Natural history
There is a delicately peach-colored sea anemone, a bottom-dwelling
animal remotely related to the coral polyps, which display an amazing
phenomenon, according to a Smithsonian report by Dr. G. E. MacGintie:
“When it was subjected to unfavorable conditions, such as overcrowding
in a pan of water,” he says, “It cast out through the mouth a
translucent, white inner lining with transparent, stubby tentacles.
These tentacles were tiny anemones. If conditions remained adverse more
offspring were cast off, each lot smaller than its predecessor.” That
is, when in trouble the animal spits out babies—presumably an emergency
measure for preservation of the species and a way of reproduction not
hitherto recorded. Apparently the same phenomenon occurs in the sea.
Partly-grown specimens of these offspring dredged from the bottom, at
first were mistaken for new species. Some of these sea anemones are
quite colorful—one purplish red, one lavender, one lemon-yellow, and
one with translucent, peach-colored tentacles.
Numerically the most abundant animals of the Arctic are the amphipod
fleas which form an important food source for fish and seals. Great
numbers live on the undersides of ice cakes from which the bearded seal
sweeps them with its whiskers.
_Fish That Live on Land_
Siam and Burma are the lands of queer fish—climbing fish, stone-eating
fish, hunting fish, dry-land fish, singing fish and archer fish.
In the distant geological past, life on this planet was confined to
the seas. Eventually some creature belonging to the common ancestry of
terrestrial animals and fish emerged from the water and over a period
of countless generations, established itself on land. Something of the
same general sort of development may be taking place in Siamese lakes
and rivers today, with a new kind of land animal in the process of
evolution. Currently, two or three species of fish are learning to live
out of water for considerable periods. At least one of them appears to
have reached the stage where it must breathe air to survive.
These evolving dry land fish were studied intensively by the late Dr.
Hugh M. Smith, fisheries advisor to the Siamese government for twelve
years. One is a species somewhat like a perch in general appearance.
It belongs to a group which has an accessory respiratory organ, perhaps
the beginning of a lung, situated in a cavity above the gills, by which
oxygen may be taken directly from the atmosphere. The gills themselves
appear inadequate to sustain life. The fish probably would drown,
although the process would be very slow, if kept too long under water.
A common method of fishing in Siam is with a spade. Some fish spend as
much as four months of each year buried in damp soil. Local fishermen
dig two or three feet deep in the marshes for them.
_The Special Language of Bees_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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