[ad_1]
We dream of finding aliens on other planets, but the truth is that we only know a small part of the diversity of living things on our planet.
Photographer and scientist Andreas Kay offers an impressive collection of photographs of insects and plants from Ecuador. One of them has attracted public attention these days. A science reporter shared a photo of Kay where we can see a small dog head much smaller than one inch, black in color and that appears to be two yellow eyes. Is it an appearance? The dog of Baskerville? The eight yellow legs that surround the head leave no doubt. It seems to be a spider that plays with the limits of our perception.
Scientific journalist journalist Ferris Jabr on Twitter wrote on Twitter talking about the "dog's head" of this spider "This could be an adaptation to deal with predators, perhaps an ornament used for breeding. Or maybe natural selection just wanted to see the expression of those faces " he added.
This is not in the photoshopped image. This is a real photo of a living spider, a cousin of spiders, called the Bunny Harvestman (19659002) Photo by Andreas Kay pic.twitter.com/jcw75n1X62
– Ferris Jabr (@ferrisjabr) October 31, 2018
According to Kay himself writing in Rumble, yellow dots can be intimidating for other animals because they make you look bigger, like many other species.
The animal in question bears the scientific name of Metagryne bicolumnata and is known as the "rabbit's opilion". It is a creature described in 1959 by the scientist Carl Friedrich Roewer. As its name indicates, it is an opilion (Order Opiliones), an arachnid that is part of a different order than that of the spiders (Aranae).
The opiliones are devoid of toxic glands, so are harmless to health. humans. Interestingly, these animals appeared on Earth at least 400 million years ago, which means that they are older than the dinosaurs, which appeared 243 to 233 million years ago. d & # 39; years.
There are currently 6,650 opilion species, although there should be 10,000 in total. (To get an idea of what this implies, only 5,450 species of mammals are known.)
As Andreas Kay explains, Ecuador is the country with the most biodiversity by [m²]. There are 1,660 species of birds, 4,000 butterflies, 500 amphibians and countless species of plants. Only 4,300 species of orchids are known.
Edward Osborne Wilson, Ants and Evolution Expert at Harvard University, said "we are destroying species and ecosystems and endangering our existence, and we are doing so with naivety and relentless energy."
[ad_2]
Source link
