National Geographic: The Body Changers Page #3

Year:
2000
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That's evolution.

Natural selection is the long process

of picking winners and losers

among organisms that differ slightly

from their parents.

Without body-changing over generations,

evolution would come to a standstill.

As it is, change adds to change

to create the entire parade of life.

Life may have begun with a blob

that by chance transformed.

When alterations were successful,

the transformer thrived

and transformed again.

One of natural selection's

winning picks

is the trick of morphing

during a single lifetime.

Plankton is a potpourri of larvae,

body changers of many species

at an early stage of life.

Creatures like this have an edge:

each stage can be honed

for a different job.

Now they are shaped for spreading

around-drifting on the currents.

Soon these beasts will be changed

beyond recognition

into new forms tailored

for feeding and reproduction.

One member of the plankton,

a crab larva,

starts life with scant

resemblance to its parents.

It shares the ocean with

another tiny drifter, the seaslug.

This relative of the snail

hatches wearing a transparent shell,

a suit of crystalline armor.

Seaslug and crab, similar as larvae,

may confront each other as adults,

as different as two animals can be.

Having shed its shell,

the seaslug eventually becomes

an adult four inches long.

It now has a new organ,

a feeding hood.

The billowy hood caresses eel grass

to catch food like skeleton shrimp.

Like a submarine Venus fly trap,

the seaslug closes up,

trapping prey like skeleton shrimp

with a zipper like seal.

Growing on the seaslug's back

are other new organs,

fleshy paddles

that will soon save its life.

As the seaslug feeds,

it is being watched

by its former plankton mate.

The crab has changed into

a formidable scavenger

with molar-like grinders on its claws.

Blind except perhaps to light and dark,

the seaslug approaches danger.

The crab pinches at the seaslug,

as hard to grab as a water balloon.

Finally the crab gets purchase.

But it gets only

a small serving of seaslug,

whose paddles pop off by design.

The seaslug swims away

with wild undulations.

Only a stump remains

where once there was a paddle.

The missing organ

may eventually grow back.

Once a tiny drifter, this body changer

is now rebuilt for escape.

Up the water column without a paddle,

the seaslug leaves the crab,

its fellow transformer,

with a meager souvenir.

Transformation is not

just the privilege of living things.

The morphing of clouds may offer

nothing more than delight.

The morphing of bodies serves

a more important goal: survival.

In the Arizona desert,

the weather shifts late in June.

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Submitted on August 05, 2018

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