Please tell me animal facts!

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Mantis shrimp have the most advanced eyes in the animal kingdom. They have up 16 kinds of photoreceptors, compared to 3 in humans. They can see five different colours of ultra-violet light, and distinguish different kinds of polarised light. Both compound eyes are on movable stalks, and the facets are arranged so that one eye on its own still has full depth perception.

Many cephalopods like cuttlefish have very primitive eyes all over their body which they use to gather info for their color changes, basically so that they can 'see' what's behind them and mimic it in the front.

They also have somewhat decentralized brains that go into their tentacles, which do a lot of the 'thinking' for the tentacles, though the main brain can overrule them when needed. It isn't unusual to see a tentacle attempting to wander off in one direction while the rest of the creature goes in another.

As an interesting relation to think about; in humans, brain cells are actually found in other places besides our heads. There's a substantial amount right around our digestive organs.

Our closest found and guestimated ancestor to cephalopods is a cute little flatworm with two very primitive eyes in the form of two dark bumps on its head which it used to look out for predators looming overhead. And while our branch ended up with the nervous system bunching up near the eyes, cephalopods' nervous system spread out.

Cephalopods also ended up evolving shells that protected their body, but counter-evolutions from their predators led to shells being more of a liability, so many species like squids and octopus ended up with progressively smaller shells until the point where its basically now just a small 'bone' inside their head.

Wait, what? I wonder why that is.

The heart also.

Like 15 odd years ago i heard a tv story about a motorcycle accident, a heart transplant , a personality change. cut along and murky memory short; heart has brain cells. Science confirms it.

A researcher has spotted a shark still hunting for its prey – despite being “half eaten”.


According to the researcher, the blacktip was set upon by other sharks, including several bull sharks which he estimated weighed up to 300-400kg.

Yet despite the attack – and a large portion of its lower body missing – the blacktip shark continued to fight for its life as it was seen swimming away.

This shark has been labelled the zombie shark and is still dangerous looking for prey despite being eaten by other sharks

Still hunting for food?

How do you fill your stomach...when your stomach is GONE????

It makes more sense when you consider the evolution of nerves, which started as very simple signalling and reaction organs, basically just connecting sensory organs to locomotive organs. Nerves then started getting thicker and more developed, increasing in total mass before starting to explore different forms of centralization and more advanced behaviors; they started to gravitate closer to more important and complex organs, which allowed for more advanced sensory input and processing capabilities.

A lot of neuron mass stuck close to the eyes as they grew bigger because eyes proved to be very effective for evading predators and spotting food, so having the processing organs closer would lead to faster response and a better ability to keep the things near the eyes safer. And so our brains were born.

But they also stuck to other organs to lesser degrees. Gut brain manages our complex omnivorous diet, our gut flora, and influences our food-seeking behavior. I imagine heart brain is for more localized control of such an important organ to not only work as it should but also modify its behavior based on the needs of the body, not just for normal stuff but also for the quick emergency alarm response of adrenaline as well as caution signals when we're running our heart or blood cells ragged. There's a complex system of redundancies to increase of chance of surviving more common injuries.

Unfortunately I'm not so hot with chemistry and biology so I only know some tidbits here and there. It's also been awhile since I last read about anything I just talked about so I may have gotten some things wrong.

Those "autism is caused by your gut" people are gonna jump on this. And maybe there is something to it.

Yep, it didn't have long before it ceased hunting and became food itself

Flame crabs on Christmas Island of the coast of western Australia emerging for breeding

Fire ant colonies can make rafts by linking together in order to cross bodies of water.

fireants are cute

When in doubt let anime be your guide for learning about other animals. For example from the anime "Naruto":

Baby Shark

Da doo doo doo

Baby Shark

Da doo doo doo

Baby Shark

Da doo doo doo

Baby Shark!

Barn Owls are thought to have inspired Irish myths about Banshees. A mythical creature that takes the form of either a young or old woman and foretells of your death or forever mourns the deaths of others. Most famously known for screeching or wailing during the depths of the night. The pale face of a Barn owl in the dark combined with the screeching understandably lead to people fearing for their lives. Banshees were typically depicted as either washing blood-covered clothing in a river or combing their hair with a silver comb. Picking up the comb of a banshee is considered bad luck.





https://www.wired.com/2014/06/fantastic ... g-banshee/

Interestingly barn owls have also fed into alien abduction narratives with many abductees claiming they are followed by barn owls whom they perceive are shape shifting aliens.