Tiny critters, around four inches big or less, build complex houses to protect them from predators and filter their food. These complex houses are all made from snot coming out of their homes. The tadpole looking creatures called giant larvaceans builds a new snot palace every day or so, and these infrastructures have piqued the scientists interests. Bioengineer Kakani Katija hopes to crack the snot palace architectural code so that someday humanity can replicate these houses, as Spectrum News 13 detailed:
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Her team took a step toward solving the mystery of the snot houses and maybe someday even replicating them, according to a study in Wednesday’s journal Nature.
The creatures inside these houses may be small — the biggest are around 4 inches (10 centimeters) — but they are smart and crucial to Earth’s environment. Found globally, they are the closest relatives to humans without a backbone, Katija and other scientists said.
Together with their houses “they are like an alien life form, made almost entirely out of water, yet crafted with complexity and purpose,” said Dalhousie University marine biologist Boris Worm, who wasn’t part of the study. “They remind me of a cross between a living veil and a high tech filter pump.”
Also, when they abandon their clogged homes about every day, the creatures collectively drop millions of tons of carbon to the seafloor, where it stays, preventing further global warming, Worm said. They also take microplastics out of the water column and dump it on the sea floor. And if that’s not enough, the other waste in their abandoned houses is eaten by the ocean’s bottom dwellers.
image via Spectrum News 13
Source: neatorama