The first time I came into contact with bergamot was during a seafood live broadcast, watching the anchor eat with relish and constantly praising the deliciousness, I was still startled by the strange shape of the food.
Bergamot snail, with its peculiar appearance, is described as "from the devil's hand" and is also called "a delicacy from hell" by Westerners because of its delicious taste.
Bergamot snail
Bergamot snail has many names, dog claw snail, turtle foot, sea chicken foot, etc., although there are many names, but this creature is not a shell type of creature, in fact belongs to the arthropod barnacles family, but is closer to shrimp and crabs.
In our country, there are two types of barnacles: gooseneck and conical, and bergamot belongs to the gooseneck barnacles.
Barnacles are magical creatures with more than 500 family members, who not only capture a large number of food lovers with their delicious taste, but also attract Darwin to spend 8 years studying them with their own way of survival.
barnacle
Barnacles are the most sought-after "parasites".
Barnacles go through four stages in their life: plankton, arthropods, adenomycoplasts, and adults.
It has been working hard all its life to find the best place to live, and once it has determined its nest, it will not easily move it.
A barnaclav cut along with whale skins
Barnacles are social creatures that almost always attach to a fixed position when they reach adulthood, so they all appear in front of people in a dense and dense scene next to each other.
Their appearance always arouses people's dense phobias, and it is precisely because of this that a dead wood full of barnacles once appeared on a beach in New Zealand, which was once considered a monster.
Barnacles themselves are hermaphrodite, generally allogeneic fertilization, because it is a fixed way of life, so generally only with the surrounding barnacles to breed the next generation, in the breeding season, will be through the retractable thin tube to send sperm to other barnacles for fertilization, which also reflects the benefits of densely packed life together, otherwise breeding the next generation has become a problem.
Barnacles parasitic on dead wood
Whether the host is alive or dead, it is okay, and everything is not picky.
Floating with the sea in infancy, feeding on the slender bristles of vines to intercept plankton in the water, it has been following the waves until there is a suitable place, they will stay with their antennae, and begin to look for the best attachment point, after some investigation, if it is found that this is not the ideal nest, before it develops, it will still be thrown into the water again, looking for the best attachment point.
If you are very satisfied, you will secrete colloids, fix yourself, continue to develop, grow a shell, and begin to live a solid life.
There are many types of barnacles, each with its own requirements for the best attachment point.
Some like to attach to the surface of hard objects, natural rocks, cliffs, shallow water and boat bottoms, while others like to attach to living creatures, turtles, whales, etc. Large barnacles are often embedded in the skin of the host, the two are symbiotic, will feed on whale body matter.
Barnacles are the lingering "scars" on whales.
Attached to a cliff that does not move, it is relatively simple, but for the swimming behemoth, the barnacles are not timid.
As whales forage in the plankton layer, barnacles, which also feed on plankton, take the opportunity to stretch out its soft filter arm and wait for the whale to appear and enjoy the whale's complimentary table service.
Barnacles regularly colonize the skin of filter-feeding whales, and often in large quantities, and once the whales are fixed by barnacles, it is difficult to get rid of this parasite, just like the "cowhide freshness" on whales, lingering.
Sometimes, a humpback whale can hold nearly 1,000 pounds of barnacles, which sounds scary, but this weight is equivalent to the weight of a short-sleeved piece of our body in the summer for the humpback whale's weight of nearly 8,000 pounds.
Barnacles are very fussy about parasitic locations.
Different species will choose specific species of whales, such as barrel-crested whale barnacles that live only on the skin of humpback whales.
They prefer places where the water flow is consistent, such as fish heads or fins.
Therefore, instead of settling where they landed, these juveniles "walked" on whales with their antennae in search of the best habitat.
If the barnacles were the size of a person, a whale would be 32,000 kilometers long.
Fortunately, these larvae have the help of sticky colloids.
Sometimes, barnacles may walk on whales for a long time until they find where they are looking, apparently the attachment location is not random.
Once they are satisfied with their position, these barnacles start digging holes. As adults, they form tubular chambers inside their shells that actually attract the skin of growing whales.
As a result, this attachment is as entrenched as the most harmful weed, becoming a lingering scar for whales.
At last
Many people wonder how the larvae find whales in the vast sea.
In fact, many scientists can not answer, after all, for most barnacles research is still relatively small, small larvae are difficult to salvage, adult insects are difficult to obtain, these are the problems that will be encountered in scientific research.
But some scientists speculate that during the whale breeding season, when the whale is wandering in warm shallow water, the barnacles may reproduce, and the parents of each barnacles can release 10,000 to 20,000 eggs, and the eggs can survive in the water for several weeks.