Peek inside a Leatherback Turtle’s (Dermochelys coriacea) mouth: How to eat jelly fish when your mouth is an exquisitely evolved jellyfish deathbed.
We know turtles like to eat jellyfish, and the Leatherback likes them most of all. However, this is the biggest turtle, consuming a prey that extremely low nutritional value, therefore it has to nom on a lot of them. As it does so, it takes in saltwater as well. The jellies and the saltwater get stored in the esophagus.
What happens next you ask? Is it to do with the horrific looking backwards facing spines that don’t look comfortable in anything’s mouth?
But of course! Because that is the beauty of evolution, the refined logic of adaptation.
The muscles of the esophagus squeeze the seawater out of the mouth and the spines, which get progressively larger down the esophagus, hold the jellyfish in place. Once all the water is gone, the jellies are passed into the stomach.
This is one of the many *awesome* characteristics of the leatherback turtle - trawling for jellyfish on this earth for over 90 million year.
Trawling for fish/shrimp (by humans, not leatherbacks), is one of the reasons Leatherbacks are classified as Critically Endangered by the IUCN Red List.
Source: Evolution FB
(Source: tumblrpigeon)
The Guillemot is a seabird that lays its eggs on a bare rock ledge on a cliff face. When an egg is accidentally dislodged, its shape causes it to spin in a tight circle, which prevents it from falling off the ledge into the sea. (Springwatch - BBC)
Can we just take a moment to appreciate how fucking awesome this is?
These eggs no doubt started out like all other avian eggs, but they had the problem of rolling off the cliffs. The eggs that were slightly more oblong tended to roll off the cliffs less, and thus the genes contained in those eggs lived to be passed on. Fast forward a few million years, and BAM tight-circle eggs.
Naturally selected for your viewing pleasure.
“Evolution could so easily be disproved if just a single fossil turned up in the wrong date order. Evolution has passed this test with flying colours” - Richard Dawkins
A+, evolution.
Just FYI, evolution and religion have nothing to do with one another. Your God creating the universe doesn’t change the fact that the Universe includes evolution on our planet.
