National Geographic: The Body Changers Page #3
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That's evolution.
Natural selection is the long process
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
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.
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
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,
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
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
whose paddles pop off by design.
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,
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.
a more important goal: survival.
In the Arizona desert,
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"National Geographic: The Body Changers" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Mar. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/national_geographic:_the_body_changers_14568>.
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