There are snakes that look like snarls of six-inch-long pieces of wrapping twine. These worm snakes are the world’s closest imitators of worms. Among the most secretive of living things, they rarely come in contact with man. When they are seen they usually are mistaken for worms. Only zoologists can put them in their true families. These living strings live exclusively under the earth, sometimes in tangled snarls of scores of individuals.
They are the smallest of snakes. Their closest relatives, however, are the gigantic boas and pythons. Judging from their wide distribution—on such isolated spots, for example, as Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean—they are quite ancient reptiles whose wanderings started about fifty million years ago.
They are found most often in termite nests, where they eat the eggs and possibly the larvae. Small earthworms and other soil creatures add to their diet. The worm snakes are almost toothless. Eyes are buried under skin, are only faint spots, and probably only can discriminate light from darkness. The tail looks somewhat like the head—a likeness presumably developed as a camouflage. They retain a snake’s scales, but these are highly polished so they can be of no help in crawling.
These Typhlopidae and Glauconidae, as the two major groups are known, are extremely active. When they are exhumed they start at once to burrow back and have been found as much as two feet underground. Occasionally they may be found in mole holes or in rotten wood where they feed on insect larvae and also, it is likely, get some warmth from the decay process. The snout is used in burrowing. They are hard to hold in the hand, owing to the high polish of the scales. There are approximately 100 species scattered over the world, two coming as far north as the Texas border. They have teeth in only one jaw—the upper jaw for Typhlopidae, the lower for Glauconidae.
Among the weirdest creatures of the deep is also one of the latest to become known to science—the sea urchin (closely related to star fish) astropyga magnifica. It is the largest sea urchin yet found in the Atlantic. It has approximately 200 bright blue eyes arranged in double rows. The body is covered with several hundred sharp, barbed black spines nearly a foot long.
That so conspicuous an animal, living in such a densely populated region—one of the most intensively studied in the world by biologists—should have remained undiscovered so long probably is due to two reasons. First, if its habits are at all comparable to those of its nearest relatives, it is strictly nocturnal and comes out to forage on the coral sands of the shallow sea bottom only after light has ceased to penetrate the water. During the day the creatures remain secluded, often congregated in great numbers, in holes and caves of the sea floor and under the coral.
Second, it is quite similar in appearance to another smaller member of the sea urchin race with spines as much as 18 inches long which is greatly dreaded and is even reputed to have caused the death of children who have fallen on it. Anybody coming upon a daytime bed-chamber of these fantastic creatures would be likely to leave them strictly alone.
This particular sea urchin is especially interesting in the development of its eyes. These appear to be true sight organs. If a hand is placed in the water near one of the animals the long barbs immediately are pointed in the direction of the intrusion, and as the hand moves the barbs move. Such a creature is practically impregnable. It never, however, takes the offensive. It cannot “throw” its barbs, but they enter the flesh easily and cause painful local irritation. Some species inject a virulent poison which may even kill a human being. There is no evidence that this species is toxic.
Astropyga magnifica, which has more the appearance of a porcupine than of any other land animal, is a scavenger of the sea bottom. It gathers and devours the accumulated debris that falls through the water. It never kills its own food, so far as is known. It has five sharp teeth in its mouth, located on its under surface, with which it can chew away the flesh of dead animals.
This sea porcupine has a peculiar system of locomotion in common with most of its relatives. It has literally thousands of sucker-like feet, which are hollow and attached to tubes within its shell. It moves by forcing water through the tubes and into the particular “feet” which it wishes to use. When these are out of use they are contracted by withdrawing the water. Being a radially symmetrical animal, the creature can move with equal ease in any direction. It has no head—that is, the development of its nervous system and the direction of its locomotion are not fixed in a forward direction, as is the case with vertebrates and insects.
Some members of the sea urchin family have hoof-like formations on the ends of some of their spines, with which they are enabled to walk over the sea bottom without using the suction disks. About the only enemy of these fearsome nightmares of the deep is man. Some species are used extensively for human food, notably among the Mediterranean coast and in the West Indies. The developing eggs are taken from the body and eaten either raw or cooked. Even if it should prove suitable for human food, it is unlikely that the sea porcupine ever will be a rival in this respect of its rival, the “sea rabbit.” It is too secluded in its habitat.
In nematodes life may have reached its greatest capacity for survival. The remarkable persistence of these soil worms has been studied by C. W. McBeth, researcher of the Shell Oil Company. One form, he reports, has been known to survive after 25 years in a glass bottle in a laboratory. Another, a pest of wheat kernels, apparently came back to life after 28 years in laboratory storage. A nematode which had invaded a rye plant, collected in Kansas in 1906, revived after 39 years of complete dehydration in a herbarium.
Those which live as active feeders in the soil, however, are not particularly long-lived. Each species depends on a certain plant type and must starve if this is not available. The recently introduced golden nematode of potatoes, a particularly obnoxious pest, is known, however, to survive as much as ten years in soils where no potatoes are planted. A great mass of eggs is produced, but not laid. They are retained in the body of the mother, who dies. Her skin remains—a bag filled with eggs.
This stays in the soil, apparently unharmed by changing conditions, until potatoes are planted again. Then some mysterious influence, as yet unexplained, causes the eggs to hatch and the whole nematode cycle begins once more.
Due to such a strange tenacity of life this nematode is about the hardest of pests to control. It refuses to stay dead. Other species likewise are specialized in one or more ways of survival under adverse conditions.
Because of the complexity and minuteness of the nematodes, it has been very difficult to determine the effects of heat, cold, flooding and drying on different species. These vary for each. One nematode species, especially resistant to drying, has a skin consisting of nine layers. The ability of this skin to hold moisture inside the minute body undoubtedly is an important defense mechanism. Some species are entirely marine, others are parasites within the bodies of other animals. It has been found that both of these varieties possess skins which are much more permeable to moisture. The original home of the phylum probably was in the sea, but a moisture-proof cuticle has been developed by those which have invaded the land.
The whole body structure of the plant nematode is almost ideally suited to life in the soil. The typical eel-shaped body is well-adapted for moving in the moisture surrounding soil particles. Deviations from this eel-form in certain stages of some species, usually in mature females, are found only in sedentary stages. The larvae and males retain the ancestral shapes. Another deviation is found in the so-called “ring nematodes” which have short, plump bodies incapable of locomotion in the typical whip-like fashion. Movement is accomplished by alternate expansion and contraction of the body.
A majority of nematodes spend a greater part of their lives in the soil. A few, however, are carried from plant to plant by insects. Although moisture is necessary if the tiny animals are to remain active, the soil seldom becomes too dry for them except in the top two or three inches. Their structure is well-adapted for moving up and down.
A part of the fantastic living world of 200,000,000 years ago has been dissolved out of about thirty tons of yellowish-brown limestone by a Smithsonian paleontologist.
The rock comes from a low mountain range in southwestern Texas—the Glass Mountains, about 250 miles east of El Paso. During the Permean geological period, when some of the earliest known forms of animal life appeared on land, the site of the Glass Mountains was a muddy bottom, probably close to the shore of a warm sea. A bewildering array of animals lived in that sea. They died and eventually were buried in the mud. In some cases their bodies were covered with silica. In others silica replaced the shells. When these rocks are placed in hydrochloric acid the limestone is eaten away but the silica shells remain. Years of skilled labor would be required to chip out of the rock what is obtained in a few days in the acid bath.
Most abundant animals of the ancient Texas sea were the brachiopods or lampshells—essentially shelled worms. The broad road of life is strewn with derelicts, stragglers and deserters. Among the most notable among them are these obscure creatures which, in numbers and apparent prosperity, seem to have been close to the dominant animals in the world in the days when giant amphibians, remotely related to present frogs and toads, and monster scorpions were establishing themselves on dry land.
Brachiopods were among the first animals to leave any traces on earth a half billion years ago. Even at that time they were complex creatures, with nerves and stomachs, which indicate a long ancestry before they left any fossil remains. In the tepid Permian seas they reached their climax in numbers and variety. They survive today, but only in a few places. For all practical purposes they are now among the most obscure animals in existence. In the whole world there are about 110 extant species compared to nearly 500 which Dr. G. Arthur Cooper, Smithsonian Institution curator of invertebrate paleontology, and his associates have obtained from one small area of the Glass Mountain limestones.
The existing brachiopod might be mistaken for a small clam. Zoologically, it is an intermediate form between mollusks and annelid worms, and somewhat closer to the latter than the former. Its way of life actually is nearer to that of an oyster than to that of most worms. It now is believed to be most closely related, through some unknown common ancestor, to the bryozoa or lace weavers. In the past both were classified together. The brachiopod never has become a colonial animal.
Its body is enclosed completely in a shell, secreted by the skin or “mantle”, except for a muscular, stalk-like extension, the peduncle, by which it attaches itself to the sea bottom. Inside the shell, folded around the mouth when the animal is at rest, are two arms or tentacles with which it can probe the water and obtain minute food particles. It also apparently breathes through these tentacles, which have a rapid blood circulation.
Most numerous of the extant brachiopods is a curious animal, the lingula, which is nearly world-wide in distribution and whose peduncle is used for food in both Japan and the Philippine Islands. Along the Atlantic coast it is present from Chesapeake Bay to Florida. It makes a nearly vertical burrow in mud or sand from two to twelve inches deep—within which it lives, attached to the bottom by the peduncle. On this footlike appendage it can lift itself until the front part of the shell-enclosed portion of the body is above the surface. This is withdrawn into the burrow instantly on the slightest alarm. The animal apparently has a quite sensitive, although very primitive, nervous system.
The extant brachiopods are usually small animals but in their Permian heyday some attained a length of more than six inches. For essentially 200,000,000 years they were without much competition in the mud burrows to which they had resorted. During this time arose clams, sea snails, and other mollusks which were free to move about and competed with them for the available food supply. The brachiopod was unable to meet this vigorous competition and in a few million years the race was well on its way towards extinction. Most species disappeared. A few, including the Lingula, survived into the age of the great dinosaurs, and their descendants constitute the species living today. They are now obscure creatures and a poverty-stricken group compared to their ancestors.
In the Permian seas they had surplus energy to expend not only in variation of form and habit—but in shell artistry. Some of the specimens obtained by the Smithsonian paleontologists are like glittering gems surrounded by silvery, hair-like spines.
These spiny brachiopods constitute about two-thirds of all the fossils obtained from the Glass Mountain rocks. Although the most abundant they were far from the dominant animals of the Permian sea. They always were defenseless little creatures, dependent on their hard, spiny shells for protection. The sea monsters of the day, creatures related to the present chambered nautilus and some of which were nearly two feet in diameter, unquestionably were the lords of this marine creation. But they were free-swimming predators who had little reason for concern with the humble mud-dwellers. Next to the brachiopods in numbers and variety, and probably their chief competitors, were the ancient lace weavers. Both shared forests of sponges which grew like small trees, up to heights of four feet and four to six inches across. Clams, some of which reached the size of giants, were beginning to claim dominion of the offshore mud and the brachiopods were near the end of their prosperous days.
Like the sedentary worms, and most of the mollusks the brachiopod starts life as a minute, free-swimming, wormlike larva, top-shaped and extremely active. During this period the mortality of the tiny unprotected creatures is very great, but once the mud-dwelling phase of existence has started, the race is secure from most enemies.
There is a definite seasonal variation in the number of feathers on most birds. It amounts to a “natural adjustment in dress to the needs of the season”. This fact has been determined through the laborious process of actually counting the feathers of birds of the same species at different seasons.
The number of feathers declines steadily from early spring until the end of summer when the so-called “post-nuptial” moult takes place, after which the bird gets a new coat to last it a year. The bulk of the new feathers are acquired at the same time, but some are added progressively as the weather gets colder. An exception to this is found, however, among those birds which migrate south early. These apparently get a complete new outfit for their journey, since they will not be obliged to experience any noteworthy change of climate.
Smithsonian ornithologists have “rebuilt” a dodo. The dodo was a large, pigeon-like, flightless bird which was abundant on Mauritius and neighboring islands in the Indian ocean during the seventeenth century. It became a symbol—first of stupidity and later of extinction.
In its restricted environment it apparently had known no serious enemies prior to the coming of man. It had grown heavy, taken to a ground existence, and lost the ability to fly. It showed no fear of man and, because of its clumsy movements, was easy to catch and slaughter, but its flesh was tough and tasteless, even for sailors who had gone for months without fresh meat. Dutch navigators called it “the nauseating fowl”.
Dogs brought by the sailors killed great numbers of the stupid birds. They might have survived despite their slowness and stupidity, however, had it not been for the pigs and Ceylonese monkeys which came to Mauritius with the first settlers. The rooting swine destroyed the bird’s eggs and the monkeys devoured its young. It was entirely extinct at the start of the eighteenth century.
There is a protozoan, wormlike monster of the microscopic world, seen only about forty times in two centuries, which gobbles up its fellow one-celled creatures a hundred at a time, walks backwards and forwards at once, and hunts in packs.
It is fifty times the size of the most familiar of one-celled animals, the paramecia, which constitute the dominant population (in numbers) of the invisible creation. It moves among the paramecia like a giant, flesh-eating dinosaur among humans. It is a cumbersome, slow-moving mass of protoplasm. Two or three get together and completely surround a large school of paramecia and these are divided as meals for the captors.
The creature was first described by the Swedish botanist Linnaeus in 1775. He called it Chaos chaos. It consists of a single cell, but differs from other one-celled animals in having three cell nuclei, instead of a single one. To reproduce, it splits in three parts, each a new animal.
Chaos chaos moves by stretching itself out into a ribbon-like form and proceeds, by a series of tugs of war, with one end or the other winning out. The animal supposedly is very rare and has been seen only about once every ten years. It may be a missing link between single-and multi-celled animals—or it may be on an entirely different evolutionary track.