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[Book] The Real Science of Dissecting Suspicious Fish: 1: Marine Life

Volume 1, 'Sea Life', introduces creatures belonging to the same taxonomic group in the order of vertebrate fish, echinoderms, arthropods, and mollusks, while Volume 2, 'Terrestrial Life', contains scientific explorations of the bodies of various animals and plants living on land.


[Book] The Real Science of Dissecting Suspicious Fish: 2 Terrestrial Life

Volume 1, 'Sea Life', introduces creatures belonging to the same taxonomic group in the order of vertebrate fish, echinoderms, arthropods, and mollusks, while Volume 2, 'Terrestrial Life', contains scientific explorations of the bodies of various animals and plants living on land.

『The Real Science Book on Dissecting Suspicious Fish 1: Sea Creatures』

Now, let's dissect a shark. If you cut open the shark's belly from the anus, you'll find it's full of internal organs.
The liver is the largest of the shark's internal organs.
Cartilaginous fish, to which sharks belong, do not have a swim bladder, an organ that provides buoyancy, unlike bony fish.
So, cartilaginous fish use their large livers instead of swim bladders to achieve buoyancy.
If you cut open a shark's liver and float it in water, you will see that it floats.
Because shark liver is rich in fat, it is lighter than water (has a low density), which allows it to function as a buoyancy aid in the body.
For this reason, sharks have very large livers.
---From "Page 23, Shark"

Inside the anchovy, you can also observe the anchovy's digestive tract, which extends from the esophagus through the stomach to the intestines.
Let's take a closer look at the anchovy's stomach. The stomach is surrounded by finger-like organs.
This part surrounding the stomach is the digestive organ of a fish called the pylorus.
The pylorus is a unique digestive organ found in fish that secretes digestive enzymes and absorbs nutrients at the border between the stomach and small intestine.
Here's a surprising fact.
By examining the digestive tract of an anchovy in detail, we can also find out what food the anchovy consumed before it died.
---From "Page 38, Anchovies"

Now, let's take a look inside the sea cucumber. If you cut open the inside of the sea cucumber, you'll see orange, thread-like structures.
This is known as the sea cucumber's roe and is widely used as food, but to be precise, it is the gonad part where the sea cucumber's reproductive cells are formed.
The orange ones are the female gonads (ovaries), and the milky ones are the male gonads (testes).
After removing the gonads, the sea cucumber's long digestive tract can be seen.
The digestive tract of sea cucumbers is long and winding, with the esophagus, stomach, and intestines extending from the mouth to the anus.
The digestive tract of this sea cucumber is also made into salted seafood and eaten, which is a food called 'Konowata'.
Konowata is known as one of Japan's three great delicacies, along with eel roe and sea urchin roe.
---From "Sea Cucumber" on pages 98-99

Among these, insects and shrimp have many similarities.
In fact, insects are taxonomically closer to crustaceans than to civets and spiders.
That's why, if you look closely at shrimp, you can see many parts that are similar to insects.
But we hate insects and love crustaceans.
Is it because crustaceans are delicious? This chapter will be quite interesting to read while considering the similarities between shrimp and insects.
So now let's start dissecting the shrimp.
From now on, we will take a closer look at the shrimp that we have been ignoring.
---From "Page 109, Shrimp"

But while shrimp and crayfish look quite similar, doesn't the crab's body structure seem completely different from that of shrimp and crayfish? There's a surprising twist here.
In fact, the crab's body has a structure quite similar to that of shrimp or crayfish, but surprisingly, the crab's body is folded in half.
Let's now observe the red crab and find out exactly what it means for it to be folded in half.
---From "Page 135, Hongge"

The gonads are located on the upper part of the clam's feet.
In bivalves, the intestine passes inside the gonads.
So if you cut off the foot and carefully cut open the gonad area, you can see the intestines running through it.
Lastly, when a foreign substance enters the body of a bivalve, it secretes calcium carbonate internally to protect the foreign substance and remove it.
The result of this defensive action is a beautiful pearl.
Beautiful pearls are created when bivalves try to protect their bodies from foreign substances.
Did you know that there are many interesting facts hidden in living things?
As we live, there are times when we face difficult trials.
But if you can endure such trials like an oyster embraces a foreign substance, it won't just remain as a scar, but will be reborn as a beautiful pearl!
---From "Page 181, Shellfish"

Unlike other clams (oysters, clams) that move little or very slowly, scallops are dynamic swimmers.
They swim by repeatedly opening and closing their two shells like castanets, and when the shells close, water is shot out through the gap at the back of the shell, providing propulsion and movement.
However, it is said that scallops' swimming consumes so much energy that once they start moving properly, they have to stay still for several hours afterwards.
To understand how a scallop's shell opens and closes, we need to look inside the scallop.
If you cut the scallop's scapula, it will split in half. This scapula is the adductor muscle, a bivalve muscle that we also looked at in clams.
---From "Page 188, Scallop"

Let's take a closer look at the inside of an oyster. The membrane attached to the shell is the mantle, which secretes the shell.
Mollusks with shells, such as abalone, conch, and clams, all secrete shells through a part called the mantle, and oysters are no exception.
If you remove the outer membrane of an oyster and look inside, you can see four layers of gills.
The reason gills take up so much space is because bivalves, to which oysters belong, use gills not only for breathing but also for feeding.
---From "Page 202, Oysters"

Abalone is a creature with many fascinating features.
Abalones move by creating waves with their muscular legs located on their abdomen, much like a snail moves.
At this time, the suction power (adhesion) of the abalone's feet is so strong that it is difficult to remove them by hand.
And the abalone has a pair of tentacles on its head.
There is also a pair of eyes located next to the antennae.
If you zoom in on the head, you can see the abalone's eyes in quite detail.
---From "Page 212, Overturning"

It's fascinating how countless creatures on Earth are grouped together according to specific criteria.
What's the point of classifying organisms by finding similarities between them? Surprisingly, taxonomy is the discipline that provides evidence for one of the most important theories in biology: the theory of evolution.
In the past, it was believed that species never changed because they were created by God.
However, the similarities between organisms discovered through taxonomy have become strong evidence of 'evolution', that organisms have a common ancestor and have differentiated into various species over a long period of time.

The closer organisms are taxonomically related, the more they have in common. Biologists analyze the evolutionary relationships of organisms through this classification and explain the origin of life in the form of a tree called a "phylogenetic tree."
I wanted to share this evolutionary flow with you by introducing various creatures through YouTube.
However, due to the nature of YouTube content, I always felt it was a shame that each video had to focus on only one creature.
So, in this book, we have grouped together creatures belonging to the same taxonomic group and organized them so that you can fully understand the meaning of taxonomy.
I hope that through this book, you can indirectly experience the mystery of life and discover the joy of biology.
Biology is so much fun, isn't it? Until you all discover the joy of living things! "Suspicious Fish" continues.
---From the "Epilogue"

『The Real Science Book of Suspicious Fish Dissection 2: Terrestrial Life』

If you look at the head of a mosquito, you will see a pair of compound eyes, a pair of antennae, a straw-shaped mouth (proboscis), and a pair of labial barbels on the upper part of the mouth.
Mosquitoes use their antennae and lower labial whiskers to detect smell, heat, and carbon dioxide to find food.
And the mosquito's mouth is a stinging mouth, which looks like a tube, but is actually a structure made up of several organs combined.
It is a combination of parts that pierce the skin, inject saliva, and suck blood.
---From "Page 22, Mosquito"

After the larva turns into a pupa, it spends about seven days without eating anything and focusing only on metamorphosis before emerging as a butterfly.
During this period, they constantly ate plant leaves as larvae to store energy.
The shocking fact is that in the early stages, most of the internal organs inside the pupa are dissolved and become almost liquid.
During the pupal stage, the insect's insides are sometimes described as turning into a 'protein soup'.
This is because, surprisingly, a mysterious phenomenon occurs inside the pupa, where most of the larval body melts away and the adult body is completely reconstituted.
---From "Page 35, Cabbage White Butterfly"

Recently, as environmental pollution has become more severe, the population of salt striders has decreased.
Since the oil in the legs plays a large role in the water strider's ability to float on water, in an environment with surfactants (soap water) that mix water and oil, the water strider loses its ability to float and drowns.
These days, there are more and more cases of oil spills, water pollution, and salt striders dying.
---From "Page 65, The Salt Struggler"

The main food source for hydras that live in freshwater is water fleas.
When we gave water fleas to the hydra, we could see it paralyzing the water fleas with its stingers and eating them.
We were also able to observe Hydra putting water fleas into its gastric cavity and secreting digestive enzymes to slowly digest them.
If you look at the picture, you can see that the water flea has become liquid inside the hydra's gastric cavity.
Isn't it amazing?
---From "Page 78, Hydra"

Many people are amazed by creatures with remarkable regenerative abilities, such as planarians, hydras, and starfish, but in fact, there are many creatures that have the ability to regenerate severed limbs.
There are cases where a severed body part is restored when a crustacean sheds its skin, a lizard's tail regenerates after being cut off, and an earthworm regenerates the remaining part of its body when part of its body is cut off.
---From "Page 95, Planaria"

The dormant eggs of the helmet shrimp are highly resistant to dryness, cold, and heat, and are said to be able to remain dormant for as long as 20 years.
It seems that this excellent survival strategy of the helmet shrimp has allowed them to survive so tenaciously from the Mesozoic era to the present.
So, people take advantage of the characteristics of these dormant eggs and make and sell dried shrimp eggs as breeding sets.
The breeding kit called 'Raising Triops' on the Internet uses these dormant eggs of the squid shrimp.
---From "Page 110, Shrimp in a Pitcher"

The shocking truth is that the little sesame-like parts on the outside of the strawberry are not strawberry seeds.
Amazingly, each of the parts we call seeds is actually a true strawberry fruit.
A fruit that resembles a strawberry is called an achene.
A berry is a type of fruit in which the seeds are surrounded by a thin, membranous pericarp.
---From "Strawberry" on page 136

Pineapple flowers bloom with 100 to 200 flowers centered on a single stem (flower stalk), and in the case of pineapples, these numerous flowers merge with the stem to form one large fruit.
So, if you look at a pineapple fruit, you can see that it is made up of hundreds of flowers joined together.
The polygonal shapes visible on the outside of a pineapple are all parts that were once separate flowers. If you look closely at these polygonal parts, you can find traces of what used to be a single flower.
Let's take a closer look at the polygonal shape.
---From "Page 149, Pineapple"

The fleshy part of the apple that we enjoy is not the part where the ovary is developed, unlike the fleshy part of fruits like peaches or persimmons.
The part that develops and forms the ovary of an apple is a completely unexpected part.
If you cut an apple lengthwise, you will see a border in the center.
The small part in the center of this apple is where the ovary develops, which corresponds to the flesh of other fruits (true fruits).
---From "Page 165, Apple"

Why do carnivorous plants eat insects? Because they need protein.
To be precise, we need the nitrogen component contained in proteins.
Most carnivorous plants live in poor environments where the soil is lacking in nitrogen or phosphorus.
Since plants cannot grow properly when they lack nitrogen or phosphorus, carnivorous plants evolved to obtain the missing nutrients by digesting insects in order to survive in poor soil.
So, carnivorous plants break down the proteins and nucleic acids of insects to obtain nitrogen and phosphorus, which are elements that are lacking in the soil.
---From "Carnivorous Plants" on pages 193-194

The number of tangerine slices varies from individual to individual, averaging ten to twelve, but if you compare the number of holes in the pattern after removing the calyx and the number of tangerine slices, you will see that they match exactly.
Check it out for yourself! What's the secret behind the pattern inside a tangerine's stem? The reason the circles in the stem's pattern correspond to the number of tangerine slices is related to the white, thread-like fibers inside the tangerine.
---From "Tangerine" on pages 212-213

If you too are curious about a certain creature, I hope you will experience satisfying your curiosity directly by observing and exploring the creature, as introduced in the book.
Knowing which taxonomic group an organism belongs to and focusing on observing its unique characteristics and related body parts can greatly deepen your understanding of that organism.
And in this process, we will be able to feel again the joy of exploration that we felt as children.
The theme of this book is creatures that we commonly see around us, such as mosquitoes, cicadas, and strawberries. After reading the book, you will have the mysterious experience of seeing things you never saw before, such as the antennae of a mosquito, the stinging mouth of a cicada, and the style of a strawberry.
As the saying goes, "You see as much as you know," the deeper your understanding of living things, the better your vision of them! I hope this book provides you with an opportunity to experience the wonders of life and discover how to enjoy scientific inquiry.
Science is fun! Why not observe something right now?

---From the "Epilogue"