EchoedCaves' Clan

Frequent roleplayer! I'm FR +2.

he/him, I hoard dragons i find pretty for lore I'll never write

1) Moray Eels are like- basically blind. Can't see much at all. Imagine what bats are supposed to see (except bats aren't blind). They basically swim around sightless tbh

2) Also about Moray Eels, they have two sets of jaws! They can't do anything normally, so when the first set of jaws opens up, a second, smaller pair is moved forward (I think my some sort of biological pully system of muscles and bones). It grabs onto the food in the Moray Eel's mouth and drags it back further into the throat.

3) There's speculation and a lot of rising evidence that Sperm Whales have a language that's unusually complex! To the point that some biologists are starting to try and converse with them (we don't understand what the calls mean quite yet).

4) Dolphins have names!! Most whales do, actually- we've seen pods of dolphins calling specific members by a series of clicks and whistles they'll repeat whenever they interact with that certain dolphin again.

5) There's a type of jellyfish that's essentially immortal. Whenever it senses that it's been under extreme biological distress (injury, the effects of aging) it can rewind its biological processes, basically, and become the small form of a jellyfish again. We have no idea how they do this or how many times it can happen.

6) Oceanic Sunfish lay SO MANY EGGS. Like SO many. They have the highest spawn rate of any fish on Earth (that we know of) with most fertile females releasing at least half a million eggs throughout a spawning season. It's one of the reasons this thing is still alive given the... well. Horrible way it functions.

7) Also Oceanic Sunfish- the ridges on their back is actually their tails! When it grows, it folds in on itself, creating an almost 'wavy' or ride-like pattern on their butts.

8) Still Oceanic Sunfish. Their larvae stage is wheel-shaped! Probably my favorite lil' shape for a baby fish, they're basically completely circular with weird spikes around their body.

9) Man o' Wars are not, in fact, jellyfish. Instead it's just a really jelly-fish shaped siphonophore.

10) The arteries next to a Blue Whale's heart are so big you could drive a small car through them. It beats about two times a minute during dives and peaks between 30-40 when surfacing and pumps about 60 gallons of blood through the whale on average.

11) Scallops have EYES. Like a lot a lot of eyes. They're around something called the mantle margin, like the lips of the scallop. My favorite are the eyes of the bay scallop that have around 18 weirdly blue eyes with little black dots in the middle.

12) Anemones are not aware enough to realize clown-fish are a benefit. They are still actively trying to eat the fish at all times, the clown-fish just has a natural mucus layer that protects it from stings.

13) Coral are constantly rearranging their insides. Like I'm not talking just shifting some stuff around, I mean the insides of those things are ALWAYS shifting. Making new parts, moving cells to repair damaged bits, it's basically a party in there.

14) We have never found an adult big-fin squid (or Magnapinna squid). They've all been juveniles, so we're not sure if they look vastly different or are just larger versions of the ones we've found.

15) People also have no idea what the little tendrils on a big-fin squid are for. Like, absolutely no idea. We thought they were for trapping prey, but they're too weak to do that, and they move freely whenever the squid flees (and they are very fast).

16) Vampire squids are the ONLY known type of squid that can and does live its entire life in the minimal zone of the ocean. Minimal zones are basically patches of the ocean with little to no oxygen, so basically nothing can survive there, but studies found that vampire squids need as little as 3% oxygen saturation in the water to survive. It has the highest affinity for oxygen of any known cephalopod species on earth.

17) The bristlemouth fish (a really tiny fish that lives deep in the Twilight Zone of the ocean) is thought to be the most plentiful vertebrate on earth with an estimated population of a quadrillion. That is basically a million billion bristlemouths.

18) There are so, so many more sea cucumbers than people assume. Past a certain depth in the ocean (around five and a half miles, I believe?) sea cucumbers make up 90% of the biomass down there. That is a LOT of cucumber.

19) Penguins necks are so long. They extend for nearly one third of the length of the bird. On top of that, penguin skeletons are constructed in a way that makes them basically always squatting on land.

20) Pufferfish skeletons are just hexagons. The spikes aren't made of keratin or cartilage, but instead hexagon shapes of bones that interlock with the fish is just swimming. They slide out when it expands (with water OR air). There's no ribs, no spine, just the fins, the tail, the skull and a bunch of hexagon shaped bones.

21) No one knows how siphonophores multiply. Do they detach parts of themselves? Do they start off microscopic? We have no idea.

22) A narwhal's horn is actually a tooth and highly sensitive. Their other tooth (yes they only have two) is located in their mouth like normal.

23) Like rodents, a pufferfish's teeth never stop growing. They have real strong teeth in there and typically grind them down with stuff like oysters, corals or other hard little bits of sea-life.

24) In order to try and avoid predators or potential parasites, parrotfish will encase themselves in a weird, slimy mucus 'bubble' that they sleep in when the fish is resting. It tends to work pretty well except for a rare few species of parasites.

25) Mantis shrimp have one of the fastest recorded movements in the entirety of the animal kingdom. They punch things like mussels or oysters to crack/open the shells, and the punch is so fast and hard that it can easily shatter aquarium glass or the tank someone keeps them in.

26) Gulper eels have stomachs that are completely elastic. No bones encasing them, nothing. They've been known to be able (and regularly) consume meals several times larger than they are. Unfortunately, they digest things so slow that sometimes the gases of the decaying prey in their stomach can make them into living balloons and propel them up to the surface of the ocean.

27) There is a deep-sea snail with LITERAL ARMOR. It lives INSIDE hydrothermal vents (places so hot they can boil sea-life alive at random). They do this by incorporating things like iron into their shells and making almost 'scale-like' coatings on their actual body. It looks kind of like badly made chain-mail.

28) Most sharks can sort of 'extend' their jaws forward to capture prey. A lot (if not all) fish species can do this, but a good example in terms of sharks is the goblin shark. If you watch them eat prey, they basically shoot out their jaws, teeth and all, and just kinda grip onto them. It then slides back into their jaws kind of like a flesh sheath.

29) Flounders don't start off with their eyes all wonky. Instead, flatfish hatch with a pretty normal appearance, but as they age, one eye migrates over to the side that will eventually become the 'surface' of the fish. The bottom of a flounder is also usually colorless.

30) Hagfish and lampreys have basically never evolved. Like ever. They have the same build, behaviors and appearances they did when they first evolved nearly half a billion years ago.

31) Hagfish produce slime! If you've ever seen a car-crash of someone transporting hagfish (they're a delicacy in some Asian countries) there's a whole lot of slime everywhere. They produce this in quantities large enough that it coats the gills of whatever was trying to eat it, killing the predator in the process and making the hagfish horribly difficult to actually hold onto.

32) Horse-shoe blood is straight blue and used to test the safety of vaccines! If bacteria or pathogens are present in the vaccine, the horse-shoe blood coagulates and proves the vaccine isn't safe to distribute/use.

33) Humboldt or Jumbo Squid hunt in packs. And I'm not talking a few or even dozens - I mean hundreds and up to a thousand in some cases. They change their color to bright, angry red whenever they're hunting or frightened/distressed.

34) Stone-fish are THE most venomous fish in the world. They have several dorsal spines with an oddly blue color that when bitten by a predator (or stepped on by some unlucky bloke) will slide out of sheaths and deliver a very potent neurotoxin.

35) Platypus are also highly venomous. Males have spurs on the backs of their legs that they drive into predators as a defense mechanism. They have barbs similar to cactus spines and can get easily stuck. The venom is so potent and painful that currently no one has found a way to combat the pain. Not even straight morphine is a pain-killer effective enough to combat the effect until it passes.

36) Most angler-fish (only females) are on average the size of a football. Males are so small in comparison that initially we thought they were two different species.

37) The reason so many weird marine animals live around or under the Arctic is because a huge under-water current circles the entirety of the Arctic. It's so strong that it basically separates the creatures inside from everything else in the ocean, preventing wide spread and allowing it to be its own environment, essentially.

38) Faceless Cusk Eels have... no face. They have two little eyes buried a bit back into their head and a mouth on the very bottom of their face (basically under them like a stingray) and there is nothing else you can visually discern. A scientist was quoted saying 'it looks like the butt of a fish on both ends'.

39) The largest migration in the world isn't performed by birds, insects, or any species on land. Instead, every night, the largest migration in the world is taken by deep sea species (fish, invertebrates, doesn't matter) rise to the surface of the ocean only to come back down come close to sunrise.

40) Whales don't die of old age. Instead, when they get older, their muscles can no longer support swimming properly and they just sorta... sink.

41) On the plus-side, when whales do end up dying (and aren't beached) they make something called a whale-fall! It becomes it's own mini-ecosystem for several decades after the whale expires and acts as food for most of the scavengers on the ocean floor. When there's nothing else for creatures to eat, bacteria will break down the bones themselves for a few decades after that.

42) Beached whale carcasses will literally explode without warning due to a build-up of methane gas. They will literally detonate with enough force to kill someone if they were too close and get hit with something.

43) The reason a lot of rabbits tend to 'shed' a lot when the hair is lightly tugged on/brushed isn't because they have such a thick coat, but because the fur isn't actually attached firmly to the skin! Instead, it's meant to detach incredibly easily, which allows wild rabbits and hares to give a predator a mouthful of fur instead of rabbit.

44) There is a parasite that renders most, if not all, Greenland sharks blind at adult-hood. Oddly enough, some believe this parasite (which is ONLY found on the eyes of Greenland sharks) aids them because they are virtually blind regardless and it resembles something of a lure. It may be one of the only ways Greenland sharks catch live prey because of how slow moving they are.

45) There's a species of Darwin's Finches (the finches native to the Galapagos Islands that proved the theory of evolution) that decided, under pressures of a lack of fresh-water, to instead get a portion of their hydration through the blood of sea-birds. They do this with sharpened beak tips. While it doesn't count for a majority of their hydration intake, it makes a portion.

46) Some lizards species don't have legs! A noteable example is a Glass Lizard, native to North America. The only sure-fire way to tell the difference is that legless lizards have earholes and eyelids, enabling them to blink. Though, if you're close enough to see that, chances are you found out if it's a snake or not already.

47) Flamingos are not naturally pink! The coloring comes from their diets, which consist mainly of shrimp and algae. They obtain the trade-marked 'hot pink' coloring via chemicals in their food.

48) Another flamingo fact: they eat with their heads upside-down! Their beaks act as something of a sieve, similar to whale baleen. They'll dip their head in the water-upside down and use their tongues to pump through mud. Things that aren't food are filtered out. Different flamingo species have slightly different beak shapes to aid in the catching of certain foods.

49) The eyes of reindeer will change color depending on season! In summer, they tend to be a deep-brown or amber to help combat higher light levels, but in winter, the iris will gradually turn to a shade of blue to help in lower light. No other mammal on earth is known to have this ability.

50) Elephants have some facet of language. While it isn't as nearly complex as something like English, they do have specific calls, including a special alarm that means 'human'. Each member of a herd also has a specific sound attached to them, thought to be their version of a name (similar to dolphins).

51) Two species of penguin, the Gentoo and Adelie penguins, will propose to a mate via pebbles. This is exclusive to males, who will retrieve a rock from a shoreline and present it to a female. If the female accepts, the pair is bonded for life. This is seen as an important gesture due to the fact that small stones are extremely difficult to find in their environment.

52) Incubation temperature can affect the gender of several species of reptiles. A good example of this are crocodiles, alligators and sea turtles. Warmer weather tends to hatch more female sea-turtles than male, though reasons for this are unknown.

53) The chemical used in candy to give it that 'artificial banana' flavor is the same scent that honeybees use as an alarm pheromone. If you smell bananas near a beehive or somehow eat a banana-flavored sweet near one, I'd recommend booking it!

54) Most species of sloth are too slow to leave their home-trees to find a mate. Instead, several species' females will simply emit something of a 'scream', loud enough to draw in any males near her tree.

55) The reason woodpeckers are able to peck as hard and fast as they do is because their tongues actually act as a 'sponge' of sorts for their brains. It wraps around the back of their skull. This serves the dual-purpose of flitting into drilled holes of a tree trunk in order to fish out insects hiding in the bark.

56) There's a genus of frogs called Mini. While only three frogs belong to this genus, all three species names are puns: Mini mum, Mini ature and Mini scule.

57) Octopus anatomy is... weird. They have eight arms, three hearts and nine brains. One brain for the 'head' of the octopus (everything above the beak, essentially) and then one brain per tentacle. This allows them to multi-task with their limbs more effectively than without the additional brains.

58) Wombats poop cubes. This is less to keep them in place while marking territory (though part of the reason) and more due to their extreme intestines, which are up to 10x the length of their body. They're quoted as smelling similar to green tea!
















































































































(dragons i find pretty and would like you to also find pretty)