Giant "lice"

ISOPODS • INDIAN OCEAN • UNDERWATER WORLD • PACIFIC

Giant isopods - woodlice-like isopods, which can reach 76 cm in length.

In the waters of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans live like large woodlice creatures - giant isopods. These shellfish have been detected in the medium of the bottom at a depth of 170 to 2140 m, where the high pressure and very low temperature (about 4 ° C).

It is interesting that, according to many scientists, giant isopods lived over 160 million years ago, even before the supercontinent Pangaea split both.

1. Giant isopods or cephalopods crabs (lat. Bathynomus Gigantes) belong to the genus Bathynomus, which today distinguish 9 species. All of them are found in various locations of the Atlantic Ocean at a depth of 170 to 2500 meters. However, most of these creatures lives at depths of 360 to 750 meters.

 2. isopods in appearance most resemble woodlice. Only the size they have a few more - they can grow up to two feet, and the largest instance fished weighed 1.7 kg at a length of 76 cm. These marine animals are an excellent example of deep-sea gigantism.

3. Close relatives in shallow water or land, on average reach a length of 1 to 5 centimeters.

4. Actually, for the woodlice isopods and took back in 1879, when the French zoologist Alphonse Milne-Edwards was first described them. Young males caught then from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. The discovery of this species in the late 19th century, completely refuted the popular notion then lifeless ocean depths.

 5. Today, it seems strange to think that at the bottom of the sea no one lives, because there get carcasses of whales, sharks and other large animals after natural death. Should someone has to take care of the purity of the ocean! Here giant isopods and assumed this is not very honorable, honest, role. Besides falling, they feed on sea cucumbers, sponges and other prey that is not too fast moves.

6. Since food on the ocean floor is not too much and find it quite difficult to darkness, isopods from time to time have to starve.

7. It was found that one such cancer is able to go without food as much as 8 weeks. But when a carnivore is quite large prey, eats it already, as they say, from the belly.

8. However, the belly, as such, they find difficult, because all of their body hidden under tight, lime, external skeleton.

9. In case of emergency they can curl up in the "ball" than currently provide protection from enemies. The shell consists of several segments, the first of which is fused to the head. Lower segments form a kind of tail shield located above the shortened abdomens.

 10. The eyes of the giant isopods matched to their owners - large, complex, consisting of four thousand faces. They are located at a distance relative to each other and provide a frontal vision cancers. Also in the arsenal of these creatures have two pairs of antennae and seven pairs of legs. The first pair of claws designed for offerings of food to the four pairs of jaws. The abdomen is composed of five segments.

11. As can be seen, looks at the isopods very peculiar. In adult females plus everything else, there are so-called brood pouches, which fertilized eggs develop. By the way, these eggs are the largest of all marine invertebrates. Naturally, such a delicacy in need of protection from the voracious marine life. Here is all female and their eggs with them in the brood pouch until they develop from small isopod ki. Unfortunately, the precise time of this process is unknown. But we know that they do not go outside larvae, and fully formed young isopod crustaceans.