I want to tell you a story, and it begins with this VERY WEIRD animal: Meet Thetys vagina...
[a thread ]
m_patton http://bit.ly/2Mgw8Sf 
#DailyJelly

(not related to the story: the person who named this animal claimed they were naming it after the sea nymph Tethys' "sheath." Like...for a sword...But I digress...)

Tethys vagina is a jelly-like animal called a salp. T. vagina salps are shaped like barrels, on one end there is a large opening where water goes in, on the other end an equally large opening where water goes out. But that's not the story either...
http://bit.ly/3r24XJz 

This story is about sex.

You see...Each large Tethys vagina, like this one, grows from an embryo. So far so good. But this T. vagina will never ever EVER have sex...no, they do something even wilder...
(c) Stefanie http://bit.ly/3pvV0DP 

Sex, after all, is very time-consuming. And that's no way to take over the ocean. Instead, T. vagina grows a CLONING FACTORY INSIDE its own body, producing chains and CHAINS of clones...
https://bit.ly/30wSCBz 

Each clone chain is made up of genetically identical, but NOT QUITE physically identical individuals. Clone chains swim like living spines, and each clone will have one, and ONLY ONE, egg...
https://bit.ly/3pt8fW3 

...When that egg is fertilized, the 'impregnated' clone will carry the young embryo until it's old enough to swim away as a young solitary salp, destined to clone more chains in its internal cloning factory. BUT THEN...

...The now-empty clone will begin developing something entirely different...testes will grow internally & it will begin SPEWING sperm into the water around it. Its job is now to fertilize egg-baring clones, so they may take their turn at 'gestating' a new cloning factory...

...the only job of this clone army is to reproduce new mature cloning factories, the job of the cloning factory to produce more clones. And thanks to this ring of sexual amplification...
(c)sc0ttsn0w http://bit.ly/2Mf1Mzl 

salps like Tethys vagina can reproduce at breakneck speed, filling a once-empty bay with their million bodies in a matter of weeks. In doing so...
[image = wiki]

...they eat so much algae that they poop out heavy carbon-rich pellets. Pellets of poop that sink. And FAST. Tethys vagina, and other salps like it, maybe one of Earth's secret wepons in the battle against climate change...

Salps sink LITERAL TONS of carbon into the deep-sea each year. So when we talk about ways to fight climate change, we can all thank the secret heroes of the sea for their part. We can all thank Thetys vagina.

[end of thread]
m_patton http://bit.ly/2Mgw8Sf