United States or Sri Lanka ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"You see that bed of pink flowers over there, and those green rushes, and those fern-like plants? Well, they are all living polyps, or colonies of polyps, some kinds of which leave coral when they die, like the coral polyps proper. "As for the Anemones; those innocent looking flowers really possess powerful weapons in the shape of tiny lassos, which are concealed in lasso-cells.
About the outskirts of the community are more simple individuals, whose whole body seems to be hardly more than a double-walled tube, terminating in a knob of lasso-cells. They are like long tentacles placed where they can most easily seize the prey that happens to approach the little colony.
The plant is not conscious of an outward world, when it sends out its roots to obtain the nourishment which is fitting for itself; but the polype, which is fixed with hundreds of its kind on the same coral-stock, and is able only to move its mouth and tentacles, is aware of the presence of the little craw-fish upon which it feeds, and throws out its lasso-cells and catches it.
These lasso-cells, which are very small, are carefully hidden in the walls of those petal-like tentacles, or feelers of the Anemone. Still other lasso-cells are hidden in the mouth of the Anemone, and inside its stomach. In the cells the long, slender, thread-like lassos lie coiled up ready for use.
Each tentacle has a globular tip filled with a multitude of cells, the so-called lasso-cells, each one of which conceals a coiled-up thread. These organs serve to seize the prey, shooting out their long threads, thus entangling the victim in a net more delicate than the finest spider's web, and then carrying it to the mouth by the aid of the lower part of the tentacle.
Word Of The Day