Have you ever imagined a day when you no longer have… anus? It must be terrible. But looking at the creatures below, the horror is much more than that.
Recently, scientists have discovered a very surprising thing when the anus of comb jellyfish has been completely lost. This problem has made scientists extremely curious to find out how in the world, strange creatures like comb jellyfish release feces into the environment?
There are countless species of creatures with strange “back gates” in the world, such as the Xenoturbella japonica worm that lives on the sea floor with countless “holes” on its back. Since they have no excretory organs, they have “created” countless different ways to excrete waste.
1. There are creatures that don’t have an anus at all
You probably don’t know, on our facial skin there are a lot of parasites – such as Demodex folliculorum – also known as face mites. And the remarkable thing here is that this animal has no… anus. This animal “stores” the residue throughout its life, so the life span of this lice is quite short, only about 16 days.
In particular, when they die, all the waste and residue of this tick will “explode” and scatter on your face. The consequences of this bad action can make our facial skin inflamed and red.
2. Use anus… to swim
With a stout body, the problem of moving is a difficult problem for manatees. However, “the difficulty shows the wisdom”, the manatees have come up with a way to control their movement speed. That is by farting continuously. The manatee’s diet is mainly seaweed – this is a cellulose-rich food, which helps produce a lot of methane to aid in “gassing”.
According to scientists, manatees have an extremely complex intestinal structure, containing many folds that help them hold their breath longer. When diving, they fill a belly of air, and when they want to float, they release air through their anus, creating pressure that pushes their body up.
3. The house from… anus?
Have you ever thought that the anus is the best place to live? It’s the truth! Such is the case with sea cucumbers.
Their anus always has to welcome uninvited guests – pearl fish up to 16cm long “innocent” get in as a shelter. Because the anus of the sea cucumber is the best hiding place. When in danger, their bodies will release poison to defend themselves and attack enemies!
However, these guests are not very friendly! Not only to live, they also take the opportunity to eat some other internal organs of sea cucumbers. When they cannot go out to feed, they will fight the toxins of “sea cucumbers” by secreting a protective slime around them.
4. Anal “falling”
There is at least one creature in this world that can save itself by… discarding the anus. It’s a South American scorpion (Ananteris balzani), whose anus is right next to the venom in its tail.
Like lizards, when attacked, scorpions will also cut their own tails. This also means that they will also lose their precious anus to prolong their life. Usually, the adult male scorpion is the easiest to “sacrifice” the anus.
When the tail falls off, the wound will heal quickly. But the problem is that the wound will completely seal, leaving no wound, making it impossible for waste to escape.
In other words, scorpions that have lost their tails will never be able to defecate again.
At this point, the scorpion will continue to hunt but only hunt small prey because in fact they cannot hunt any animal that is too large without using venom. Moreover, eating a lot only causes the abdomen to swell, the stool to leak, and to die prematurely.
5. Anal… strong
Considered exhaustively, we must also admit that the anus does indeed play an important role in sustaining life on Earth. For example whales. If cow dung is a good source of nutrients to fertilize plants, whale dung is the “element” to maintain and develop marine life.
Because whales consume a lot of food every day, there will certainly be undigested food that has been discharged outside. Therefore, whale droppings are a rich source of food, nurturing plankton species.
At the same time, zooplankton will grow stronger when eating whale droppings, some of which can photosynthesize to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Scientists estimate that the whale poop cycle can remove about 200,000 tons of CO2 per year! In the past, when the number of whales was still high, the amount of gas could reach millions of tons.
