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Discover the idea of the whereabouts of the giant “palazzo” of strange creatures on the seabed

Each creature has its own “idea” of a place to live, but perhaps no creature has a “majestic palace” like the giant larvacean in the deep sea.

With their large rounded heads and flattened tails, these transparent invertebrates look like giant ghost tadpoles.

The largest size of the larvacean is the size of a large cookie, but the house they live in can be up to 1m long.

According to the latest publication in Nature, with laser technology, scientists have sent the robot into the sea 400m above the water to capture the “super luxury homes” of this plankton. The photographs obtained show the giant larvacean living in a nest of two layers: an inner nest and an outer nest.

Close-up of the giant larva’s beautiful nest with a blue larvacean creature in the middle



“Think of this creature’s home as a brain with the brain inside and the skull on the outside,” said Kakani Katija, study leader at the Monterey Bay Oceanic Research Institute (MBARI) today. 4/6.

The outer nest is responsible for protecting the organism from predators – making it harder for their hunters to detect and is also a barrier to protect the inner nest with a mechanism to filter water, keeping unnecessary substances. The inner nest will collect all the food through a small tube that the outer nest has filtered. Katija considers this feeding mechanism to be very sophisticated.What amazed scientists was the larvacean’s ability to build nests. “Belonging to a chordate animal, the larvacean has only simple cells in its head that secrete mucus and inflate it into a ‘floating castle’, like a balloon that deflates and then inflates. only time. Everything happened in less than an hour,” Katija said.



“It was unbelievable to see this scene. A spider with 8 legs and a head to create a web. This creature only has one head with simple neurons and a tail,” added Katija.

Researchers were able to create a 3-D model of the plankton’s house with a laser

Another surprise is that this nest is only valid for 1-2 days, when the filter is clogged and the outer nest is full of dirt, the larvacean creature will leave it and make a new double nest. The old house is full of dirt that will sink to the bottom of the sea, becoming food for other creatures.

Although larvacean mucilage nests have been observed since the 1960s, it is difficult for scientists to understand the mechanism of formation. These gelatinous structures are so fragile that you cannot sample them for analysis. The only way to see it is to track the larvacean habitat – a technological challenge.



Giant “palace” of creatures on the seabed

Thanks to the MBARI laser scanner, scientists were able to observe the creature’s activity in detail through continuous laser images and using 3-D reconstruction techniques.

Katija hopes that the discovery of the larvacean mechanism of action will pave the way for a filtration technology as well as medical applications. At the same time, this laser scanning technology will also help uncover the working mechanism of many other creatures on the deep sea floor.