Librivox recording 1
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The Strangest Things in the World by Thomas Henry The Luminescent 10 Offers read by Christian Boco. This is a Libra Vox recording. All library books recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit libra vox dot org. There are windless nights when Caribbean waters seem like fields of green fireflies. This is due to the vast numbers of luminescent 10 fours or comb bearers, one of the most abundant and least known forms of animal life. They are also among the most delicate. Although they are related to the plenary in worm and the jellyfish, they are quite unique. Superficially, they seem little more than animate bags of water. With skins thinner than most delicate tissue paper, they are bound in staggering numbers over most of the world. One of the most familiar types is the American name biopsies. On calm summer days, the amber green species sometimes covers completely thousands of square yards of see like a raft formed of millions of individuals floating just below the surface. A classic ground for this phenomenon is Narragansett Bay. Like the rest of its race, the tenor for is like a fragment of moonlight on the sea. It is so fragile that the slightest current of water in its neighbourhood is sufficient to tear it to bits. It is about as elusive as moonlight. When grasped gently, the jelly like substance slides through the fingers. Taken in a net and placed in saltwater, it vanishes completely on the way from boat to laboratory. Intact specimens are almost unknown in scientific collections. Ordinarily, they live at considerable depths. In the zone of absolute calm, where all wave movement ceases, great hordes rise to be the surface only. On nights when the surface of the ocean is like a sheet of glass, they are among the loveliest of all sea creatures. The delicacy of their colouring is that of spring or beauties or any money. Their presence is indicated chiefly by the brilliant flashes of rainbow colours as they pass a few inches below the surface. The majority are pear shaped. Giant of the race is Venus's girdle, best known in the Mediterranean but found most in subtropical seas and sometimes swept as far north as the coast of New England. It is an undulating, iridescent ribbon, as much as five ft long and two inches wide. The Niemi oxus of southern New England waters is ball shaped with a diameter of about four inches. 10 offers are most varied in the Bay of Naples. There, 18 species have been identified. There are 14 species now known in the Caribbean. In absolute numbers, however, the fragile creatures are most abundant in North Atlantic and sub Arctic waters, where, because of ordinarily rough seas they are seldom seen there. They constitute one of the major menaces of the cod fisheries. Despite their fragility, they are vicious little animals, devouring cod eggs and fry in incalculable numbers. Each living water bag has a slit like mouth on top and what apparently is a sense organ of some kind on the bottom. The minute struggling prey are seized in two pencil like tentacles and pushed into the mouth. They are digested quickly by the juices in the water sac, in which float about whatever vital organs the tenor for possesses. The 10 offers are by no means aberrant jellyfish, which they resemble only in the extreme tenuousness of their bodies. They have no umbrellas and no stinging cells. Two forms are known, which have flattened bodies like plenary in worms in which creep on the sea floor. Because of various similarities in the development of both creatures, some zoologists believe they are immediate descendants of an unknown common ancestor. The function of their weird green luminescence is unknown. It would seem of questionable value in attracting prey, and it is difficult to imagine that these most fragile and evanescent of earth's creatures have any sort of love life. Nevertheless, light making seems to constitute a purposeful part of their activities. End of Section 96