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posted by
mrpg
on Tuesday July 11 2017, @06:38AM
from the you-look-to-sea-to-see-what-you-can-see dept.
from the you-look-to-sea-to-see-what-you-can-see dept.
Most animals have a circulatory system that pumps blood. Sea spiders have a digestive system that can move both food and blood:
Researchers discovered the remarkable physiological strategy after injecting dye into sea spiders—common inhabitants of the world's oceans named for their resemblance to land-based spiders—and watching the flow of blood. They noticed that the animals' hearts were beating weakly. But the digestive system—which is unusually extensive in sea spiders, running down each leg—was contracting in waves, moving food in the gut as well as blood in the surrounding hemocoel cavity, the spider equivalent of veins and arteries.
Respiratory gut peristalsis by sea spiders (DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2017.05.062) (DX)
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Sea Spiders can Pump Blood with Their Guts
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(Score: 2) by Zinho on Tuesday July 11 2017, @03:54PM
From TFA:
Humans move blood through veins with the assistance of muscle contraction in the extremities, in combination with one-way valves at regular intervals along the veins. It seems to me that these sea spiders are doing something similar, with the twist that their guts are distributed along their limbs as well and are available to provide the pumping action. How many other animals have this guts-in-the-limbs feature and exoskeletons? I would think that those two features, together with one-way valves in the blood vessels, would naturally lead to this gut-pumping action.
It makes me wonder, do these sea spiders asphyxiate if they stop eating? Hunger == suffocation? Are their hearts able to pump the blood without this boost, and just resting when it's available? Seems like there are some interesting follow-up questions that an enterprising biologist could spin into another paper :)
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