The evolution of insect swarms from XNUMX million years ago

Chapter 53 How starfish eat

Eat, keep eating, divide, multiply.
  In the eye spots, the frequency of light and dark in the world suddenly accelerated, and then in the sensory organs, there was more and more food around the body.

Its primitive ganglia cannot understand everything happening in the water above. It only knows that eating one more bite of food may be the difference between life and death.

The body tube with a special structure squirmed and stretched under the action of the original hydraulic system, driving the body to slowly squirm on the mountain-like object in front of it. Immediately, the mouth in the center of the body slowly made new movements.

The sac-like organ is extruded from the opening, and the special enzyme structure dissolves nearby tissues, which are then absorbed by the sac-like organ as a whole.

While it was immersed in eating, it suddenly developed an instinctive desire, which was to divide, proliferate, and complete reproduction.

The roots of the tissue were broken, and one arm and leg began to fall off from the body. The flesh and blood tissue at the place of detachment slowly wriggled and proliferated, but soon regenerated the prototype of another individual.

A strange feeling appeared in its consciousness, and it suddenly felt that the separated individuals were also controlled by it.

Something seemed to be broken, and the concept of "self" suddenly emerged in his consciousness. And from this moment on, something changed.

The two individuals accelerated their devouring speed at the same time and continued to quickly devour the huge piece of food below. But an idea suddenly emerged - a desire to further perceive the world.

An arm and foot began to extend, and the flesh and blood tissue squirmed, slowly giving birth to a strange structure. Immediately, the end of the structure separated from the main body, and the granulation squirmed, continuing to grow towards a complete individual.

But this time, the new individuals are a little different.

Countless eyeball structures sprout from the top of the wrist and foot tissue. Looking up, the indescribable and weird appearance makes people go crazy.

The first beam of light was reflected in these densely packed small eyeballs - and then, it saw a scene it would never forget - a huge figure with a body that seemed to block out the sky, slowly swimming with four flat legs on its side.

It doesn't know what wings are, and it doesn't know what clouds are. Otherwise, it would definitely describe its huge body as "wings like clouds hanging from the sky".

The two sides of the huge creature are surrounded by some figures that are similar to the giant shadow but slightly different. On the other side, a few slender stick-like but equally huge creatures shuttle, waving their arms and legs, as if attacking each other.

The largest ones opened and closed the first pair of legs at the front of the body, easily smashing the bodies of the slender creatures, and falling downwards with slowly spreading blood mist.

Only then did it understand where the flickering scenes and the food that seemed to fall from the sky came from. In the past, in its knowledge, the world was just a flat surface, and the food came from outside the world. This was the first time it came from Get exposed to the three-dimensional world.

At this moment, a brand new feeling appeared in his consciousness again - it was a deep feeling of powerlessness. These terrifying giant shadows were as oppressive as gods, causing it to panic at the same time.

Its nascent self-awareness lets it know that if all individuals die, its consciousness will also dissipate. The underlying logic from biological gene sequences tells it that this result should be avoided.

Continuing to divide, another individual's arms began to fall off, but this time, all the arms fell off at the same time, and proliferation and regeneration began.

The food resources are quite sufficient, enough for it to proliferate. All it needs is enough time to divide and copy more individuals.

The newly born self-awareness can't think of any good solutions. I didn't realize at all that using the method of growing an eyeball just now, it might be able to proliferate other structures. The only thing it can think of is that if the individual proliferates enough to make it impossible for the opponent to kill them all, it can save one life.

But the reality is that its time is running out.

The giant shadow slowly passed by, and an unknown structure floating above followed it and reflected in the eyes. The structure made it somewhat familiar.

It does not know the names of bilateral symmetry and radial symmetry, but this does not prevent it from seeing the difference between the two. The new thing that appears is obviously similar to what it once looked like, and it belongs to radial symmetry.

Around the radially symmetrical body, there are structures similar to arms and legs hanging down, and there are still things hanging densely on the arms and legs.

It just felt something was wrong - in the next second, the densely packed individuals hanging above fell off one after another, spreading their legs in front of the body and killing downwards!
  When the scene in front of him came into consciousness through Gong Hao's compound eyes, Lin Yi was stunned for a moment.

Unsurprisingly, the debris everywhere attracted a large number of benthic organisms that scavenged for trash. But this time, there were some strange figures among the creatures picking up trash.

The radially symmetrical body, five arms and legs, and the densely packed tubular stepping structures under the body all illustrate their identity as starfish.

The echinoderms of this era were all fixed to the seafloor and filtered, such as crinoids, sea lilies, ringworms, etc.

Starfish, a group of echinoderms that can move and actively eat, are relatively advanced. They may have evolved from a crinoid-like species that rolled over and plunged headfirst into the ground.

Unexpectedly, in this era, the prototype of starfish has already taken shape, and from the appearance point of view, it is quite close to the starfish of later generations.

These starfish were light red in color, and at first glance, their appearance did not seem to be much different from those of later generations - until Lin Yi saw the appearance of one of them clearly.

Above the arms and legs, between the gills and spines, there were actually many eyeballs arranged. At this time, looking up blankly, some of them were still rotating, which was particularly scary.

Echinoderms already have eyespots on their arms and legs, which is nothing unusual.

However, these eyespots are inferior to the single eyes of arthropods except compound eyes. They are just one pixel and can only be used to sense the intensity of light. And he had never seen anything like this one with complex eyeballs.

However, these starfish are lying on the scars torn apart by fearless soldiers on the floating mother nest of the Straight Skeleton Nest Group, gnawing at the mother nest tissue below, and one of their arms and legs will fall off from time to time while eating.

After the arms and legs fell off, the flesh and blood tissue squirmed, and a small starfish body grew out of the break - they actually reproduced and multiplied directly by dividing, and the speed of regeneration after division was astonishingly fast.

All the above made Lin Yi conclude that these starfish that appeared inexplicably in this era are definitely not simple. This may be related to the fact that the floating mother nest of the right spiral stone nest group was swallowed by the opponent.

But no matter what, they cannot be allowed to continue to proliferate. The workers immediately stepped forward with two pairs of chelicerae, preparing to kill two of them and extract the genetic sequence to see what the trick was.

(End of this chapter)