[轉貼]
自然界中獵食同類的生物相當多，諸如大王眼鏡蛇、烏賊、獅子等等，但沒有一種像新發現的兩棲動物「嗜母蚓螈」(Microcaecilia dermatophaga)一樣，幼年期專門以媽媽的皮膚為食。
▼「嗜母蚓螈」幼年期專門吃媽媽的皮膚獲得營養
「嗜母蚓螈」外型與蚯蚓相似，卻有脊椎、巨大的嘴巴，以及特別為了刮下母親皮膚而發育出來的鋒利牙齒。別以為牠們的媽媽會這樣就被吃光，為母則強，雌蚓螈生產後會額外生成皮膚，讓孩子能獲得充足的營養。
儘管這種蚓螈軟趴趴、黏滑滑的，還有著可怕的嗜母天性，牠們小時候其實相當可愛，埋藏在骨頭底下的眼睛看起來十分天真。不過這對眼睛沒有實際用處，牠們主要還是依靠頭上的觸角感受土壤裡的化學物質。
▼小時候還滿可愛的
美國哈佛大學團隊在法屬圭亞那發現「嗜母蚓螈」，研究員莎芮特(Emma Sherratt)表示，牠們很可能已經生存2億5000萬年了，也就是說，無論甚麼原因殺死了恐龍及其他生物，這些了不起的兩棲動物活了下來。
Mom Feeds Her Own Skin to Young
Image: Mother amphibian with two hatchlings feeding on her skin.
Mothers the world over sacrifice a lot for their kids, but one of the most giving moms has to be a newly discovered amphibian mom that feeds her own skin to her offspring.
The name of the new species, Microcaecilia dermatophaga, means “little skin-eating caecilian.” It’s one of only four known species of caecilian whose young feed in this manner.
Caecilians, in turn, are animals that look like a cross between a worm and a snake, but are actually legless amphibians whose ancestors lived before dinosaurs first emerged.
“What we’ve found is another species that’s a skin-feeder, but most importantly, it’s another species that’s quite distantly related to other skin-feeders we’ve found, meaning that skin-feeding is probably an ancestral characteristic for caecilians,” co-author Emma Sherratt from Harvard University told the Natural Environment Research Council.
The little skin eater was discovered in French Guiana. Caecilians like this only live in the moist tropics and most are underground.
To humans, their method of feeding kids is pretty stomach churning. Mom grows an extra layer of fat-rich skin. Her young, which have specialized skin-eating teeth, then scrape it off and eat it as they’re growing and maturing. The special teeth are replaced with pointier ones as they grow older. At that point, the nearly blind animals mostly feast on worms and termites, so you’d probably want to have them living under your house.
“From an evolutionary perspective, finding another species that’s a skin feeder gives us a better understanding of when this trait actually evolved,” said Sherratt, “and perhaps whether it has evolved many times or whether it’s a key characteristic for a lot of species, in which case caecilians may have developed this specialised maternal care very early on in their evolution.”
She continued, “They are still very poorly understood compared to most other creatures, so any information we do find out gives us that just that little bit more knowledge about the secret lives of these creatures that spend their entire lives underground, and seemingly have been around for a very long time.”
“Molecular estimates tell us they are probably around 250 million years old, which means caecilians survived whatever killed off dinosaurs, and many other creatures around the world, and for that reason I think they’re quite extraordinary.” |
發表於 2013-3-26 01:09 PM
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發表於 2013-3-26 01:24 PM
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