The earth is a world of life rich in species, with millions of different kinds of life. These lives are mainly distributed on land and oceans. In fact, there were no terrestrial life in the early life on earth, only marine life, and the most primitive life on earth was born in the ocean.
So marine life is actually richer and more mysterious than terrestrial life. Although human beings have basically understood most of terrestrial life, except for some life at the poles, after entering the age of science and technology, we don’t know much about marine life, especially deep-sea life.
The ocean area accounts for 71% of the earth’s surface area, so the types of marine life are more complex than terrestrial organisms, and there are still many areas of the ocean that are blind spots for exploration, such as the deep sea. Human beings can only dive up to 100 meters with ordinary diving equipment. The shallow water area is the area where the sun can irradiate. This area has the most marine life and the most concentrated sea layer.
When the water layer is out of sunlight, it enters the deep water area, where it is almost dark, and the difficulty of exploration is relatively large, and the deeper the deep sea requires more advanced diving equipment to be able to go deep. Even if we can go deep into the sea for 10,000 meters, it is still very difficult to truly explore the mysteries there.
Therefore, humans currently have less than 10% of the exploration and understanding of the ocean, and 90% of the unexplored areas are mainly concentrated in the deep sea. However, if humans want to enrich the earth’s life circle and find more unknown creatures, it is necessary to explore The place is the deep sea. Every year, scientists discover many species that have not been discovered before, most of which come from the ocean, especially deep-sea creatures.
So what special marine creatures did scientists discover in the deep sea? In fact, there are still a lot of deep-sea creatures discovered. Today we have selected 5 weird-looking deep-sea creatures to let friends know about them. Each of them is an eye-opener for people.
1. The big king worm, also known as the giant deep sea lice, giant isopod, is the world’s largest animal kingdom, arthropod phylum, isopod, and water lice. It is generally believed that the great king-footed insect lives in large numbers in the cold deep ocean of the Atlantic Ocean.
This kind of bug belongs to insects. In many people’s perceptions, insects are relatively small. But few people know that there was an era of giant insects on the earth 234 million years ago. It was an era when insects dominated the earth. Insects were able to dominate the world because the insects at that time were extremely large. The wingspan of ordinary dragonflies could reach more than 2 meters, and the body length of centipedes reached more than 3 meters.
If you think about it, you can imagine that the insects themselves are very horrible and weird, plus the size of a few meters or more, how incredible it is. If such a large insect appears in front of us now, it is estimated that many people will be directly stunned. Of course, the era of giant insects did not last for too long before it ended. Later, the insects continued to grow smaller in the process of evolution and became small insects today.
As a member of the modern insect kingdom, the king’s footed insect has a body length of 19-37 cm, which is already a giant in the insect kingdom. It’s just that the king worms do not live on land but in the ocean, and the main activity area is also in the deep sea.
Giant kingfish are important scavengers in the deep sea environment. People also call them marine scavengers. Most of them are carnivorous, mainly eating the carcasses of dead marine organisms, such as whales and squids. In addition, they will also actively hunt some slow-moving marine creatures, such as sea cucumbers, sponges, nematodes, radiolarians and other seabed animals and plants.
Insects naturally have a large number of compound eyes, and the king worm is no exception. It also has as many as 4,000 compound eyes. The compound eye function is very powerful, not only can expand the field of view, but also more sensitive to the surrounding moving objects, and can detect potential hazards in time.
Although the king worm is a deep sea scavenger, we should not underestimate this creature, it can also be regarded as a kind of overlord in the deep sea. Although it will not actively attack other creatures, if a creature provokes it, it will have to withstand its powerful attack power. Moreover, this creature’s survivability is also very powerful, and it can go without food for several months.
2. Frilled sharks. Speaking of marine overlord-level creatures, many people think of sharks. Sharks can be regarded as the dominant creatures of the ocean. Their main area of activity is also the deep sea. Although whales are much larger than sharks in size, in reality, whales are a kind of marine creature that sharks like to hunt very much. .
Even the largest creatures in the ocean like blue whales may be eaten by sharks. Many people’s perception of sharks is that of normal fish size, but one type of shark is completely different from other types of sharks. This shark is called Frilled Shark, which is a special shark similar to an eel.
I believe everyone knows that the eel is a fish with a slender body, similar to the body of a snake. The frilled shark is a slender shark. From the outside, you might not think of it as a shark, but a giant water snake.
Frilled shark is named for its gill clefts with wrinkles on its head. Because of its similar appearance to eels, it is also called “Pseudo-eel” and is one of the most primitive shark species on earth. Generally live about 1500 meters under the sea. Although it looks like an eel, this shark has 300 sharp teeth and more than 25 rows. It looks like a fierce predator in the sea.
Frilled sharks feed on fish and other sharks, and their jaws open and close flexibly, capable of swallowing their prey whole. It can be seen that although it is also a member of the shark family, it is a natural enemy of sharks. Once it encounters other sharks, the frilled shark will also attack and hunt, using them as food. Frilled sharks obviously have stronger physical power than ordinary sharks.
3. Mysterious cuttlefish, cuttlefish is also called cuttlefish, cuttlefish, cephalopod mollusk from the squid order, closely related to octopus and calamari. The squid’s body can be divided into three parts: head, feet and trunk. The trunk is equivalent to the internal organs and is covered by a muscular mantle with a calcareous inner shell.
Although squids are molluscs, they are very domineering in the ocean, especially the big squid is a terrifying marine creature. They live in the deep sea, with a body length of more than 20 meters and a weight of about 2-3 tons. They are the largest invertebrates in the world.
There are many types of squids, and they live in the deep sea, and they are a kind of terrifying deep-sea creatures, so we know very little about the big squids. Scientists once discovered a very rare giant squid when exploring the deep sea in the Gulf of Mexico. It is called the long-legged squid, which may be a kind of large-fin squid.
The large fin squid can reach 1.5 to 7 meters in length. The giant squid discovered by scientists in the deep sea is slightly different from the large fin squid previously known. It appears to have more than 10 appendages of the same length. Scientists have only photographed a scene of it from a distance. As for the specific information of this creature, we don’t know. Some scientists believe that this may be a new type of marine life, not a big fin squid.
Fourth, the special lizard fish, lizard fish can be said to be a very rare creature in the ocean, they generally live in the deep sea of 1000-2500 meters. Scientists on a scientific research boat accidentally pulled out this thing when they were fishing with a trawl net near eastern Australia. It looked like a monster with fangs, with the body of an eel and the face of a lizard.
Although they are not overlord-level creatures in the ocean right, they have relatively strong survivability. The reason is that these marine creatures are hermaphrodite, which means that any lizard fish can reproduce offspring with other lizard fish it encounters. Relying on this powerful ability, they can survive in the ocean for a long time.
5. Sparrow-tailed Mantis Shrimp, this is a very beautiful shrimp. Under its charming appearance, it hides its powerful predatory ability. When they are capturing their prey, they can strike the prey with extremely fast speed and impact, even if the prey has a hard shell, it will still be crushed.
Sparrow-tailed mantis shrimps are extremely aggressive, fierce and territorial, and often appear fearless. Fish are its main enemy. After being caught in the open air, it always fights. The bird-tailed mantis shrimp struggling in the hunter’s mouth is difficult to swallow, and many are spat out intact. If you put a birdtail mantis shrimp into a large fish tank, it won’t be long before the other small animals in the fish tank will be eaten up by the birdtail mantis shrimp.
The above five weird marine creatures are just the tip of the iceberg in the entire deep-sea creatures. With the continuous advancement of human science and technology, we will still be able to discover more peculiar and mysterious marine creatures with more powerful deep-sea diving devices in the future. Perhaps the greatest secret of the earth lies in the deep ocean.