The evolution of insect swarms from XNUMX million years ago

Chapter 287 Land-traveling Strange Shrimp
The waves hit the fine sand, washing and deforming a few lines of strange footprints, and gradually faded away. Under some weird native plants of Dikla, several small flying dragons were hovering, flying down from time to time and making unique chirping sounds.

What's a little disgraceful is that a small piece of fungus carpet and two mother's nest-like buildings were born on the fine sand. An appendage-like structure extends from the top of the two structures, and there is a special membrane in the middle that looks like a fungus carpet. Like structures are connected, and the dense discoloration and luminescence cells on them are rapidly changing color.

Beside the structure, a shadowfly stood sideways. On its abdomen, a special vocal organ was operating, emitting bursts of slightly weird but extremely rhythmic sounds. At the same time, a pair of appendages pointed, as if they were saying something. .

In front of it is a somewhat weird giant insect. Although it is roughly the shape of an arthropod, it has a jaw-like structure that opens and closes up and down. Although it has six legs, its shape is somewhere between an arthropod and a vertebrate.

If you look closely, you can see that its jaw is actually composed of a huge, placoderm-like skull and two appendage structures. The lower jaw can be further separated, and the throat position between the two jaws is radial. Blood drop-shaped mouth cone structure.

Such a structure, whether on Earth or on the planet Dikla, has only ever been possessed by one creature - the Pseudognathus Hedera, the level of the Anomalocaris nest colony. Looking at other structures of this creature, such as a pair of compound eyes with eyestalk structures visible at the ends, hardened dorsal leaves on its back, etc., we can all see the characteristics of Anomalocaris.

It has to be said that Lin Yi was really impressed by the creativity of the anomalocaris nest group. For example, behind the head and neck of this creature, there are several clusters of special whisker-like structures that evolved from the bristle structure on the back of Anomalocaris, standing up diagonally backward like a lion's mane, instantly increasing its aura.

The tail is an earwig-like tail clip that is a specialization of the two original tail whiskers, and combined with the overall body that combines the texture of an arthropod's exoskeleton and the streamlined muscles of a vertebrate, it has a unique aesthetic.

The idea of ​​anomalocaridids nesting group was beyond Lin Yi's expectation. They seemed to be preparing to go back to the road of converging with vertebrates and combining joints and spines to bloom. They chose to build on the basis of hierarchical individuals similar to Pseudognathus Transformation.

The six arthropods are formed by combining the gene sequences of the swimming lobes and the inner shell to form a shape similar to the fins of lobe fish, and are further specialized into appendages between arthropods and vertebrates.

Lin Yi didn't know how to evaluate this - the swimming leaves were originally highly specialized arthropods, and now they were restoring their arthropod shape in this way. How could he think of it and reveal the violation.

But no matter what, after a series of operations and fine-tuning, what finally appeared in front of Lin Yi was such a strangely beautiful creature that no one would know to be an Anomalocaris unless told.

But at this time, these are not the focus. The point is, at this time, in front of this weird terrestrial shrimp, a tone similar to that of the shadow fly's vocal organ was heard, as if it was imitating the pitch of the shadow fly.

If anyone from the same era as Lin Yi could see this scene, they would be shocked to find that the vocal organs of the shadow fly and the terrestrial shrimp are clearly Chinese, but because of the different structures of the vocal organs, the accents are a bit weird. .

After all, communication on the display screen is a bit inconvenient. In order to make communication more convenient, Lin Yi thought of teaching the language to the Anomalocaris nest group. Anyway, the vocal organ is not a technically complex structure, and with the IQ of the nest group, it is easy to learn it. It won't be too strenuous. At first, Lin Yi thought about the Ezki language to facilitate possible technical exchanges in the future. However, firstly, the Ezki language is divided into two parts: sound and light, which is a little troublesome. Secondly, Lin Yi could not forget his past life after all, and was prepared to commemorate it in this way, so he finally chose to teach the mother tongue of his previous life. To the Anomalocaris nest colony.

As for text, he has no plans yet - the most important thing now is to quickly enable the other party to have complex communication with him. There is no need for text at the moment, so there is no need to rush.

The picture on the biological display screen structure in front of you changes, and while the shape of the object is presented, the shadow fly speaks the corresponding word or phrase in the vocal organ, and then lets the other party learn it bit by bit.

The IQ and existence form of the nest group determine that their learning ability cannot be poor. With the supporting hardware structure, that is, the vocal organ, it is not too difficult to learn a language.

After a period of teaching, the anomaly shrimp nest group has been able to initially master the language. Lin Yi feels that it is almost time to start squeezing. In short, it is time for the other party to play a certain role.

On the screen, the picture changed again, turning into a simple schematic diagram of the solar system - since the other party had shown interest in astronomy before, let's start from this aspect and start some basic theoretical education.

It just so happened that in order to facilitate research, Lin Yi also needed the other party to understand a lot of basic knowledge about the space environment and conduct divergent research on this basis, otherwise everything would be empty talk. As for some detailed advanced theories, there is no need to teach them all at the moment.

In terms of theoretical science, Anomalocaris nests are probably of little help, but in terms of applied science, sometimes ingenious design can make the same technology achieve stronger effects, and in terms of design solutions, compared to theoretical science, When resources are exhausted, some creativity is needed.

Creativity may be the only shortcoming of the existence of the nest group. After all, Lin Yi is just a single consciousness. Even the hive mind consciousness that controls an unknown number of individuals may be more mechanically efficient than an equal number of ordinary individuals, but creativity, a somewhat metaphysical field, is not the same. That’s easy to say.

Therefore, Lin Yi has been looking for solutions. The previous solution was to copy the existing solutions through convergent evolution, such as the feather scale structure of the Feather Scale Flying Dragon, and now he is considering applying it to the reflective surface structure on the starfly.

But now, the "resurrection" of the anomaly shrimp nest has indeed given Lin Yi new hope. Although the other party also exists in the form of a nest, at least one more consciousness can double the creativity. What's more, after the other party "died" once and was resurrected by Lin Yi, he is indeed better able to do things.
The anomalocaridids nest group has not disappointed Lin Yi in this regard. The swordfish-shaped Hurd shrimp was the true pioneer of the swordfish niche, hundreds of millions of years earlier than Carlo Wilhelmina. This terrestrial anomalocaridids It was a path that Lin Yi had never imagined. Given some new technologies, there was no telling what ruthless work they could do.

Hundreds of millions of years later, the two hives that once fought side by side finally continued to form an alliance in another way.

(End of this chapter)