Fairy shrimps were discovered in Jiangsu, and they have existed for 200 million years! More important than whether they can be eaten is...

Expert of this article: Liu Yadan, researcher, deputy secretary-general of China Agricultural International Exchange Association, national chief scientific communication expert

To cheer you up this morning, let's have a no-prize quiz.

Question: Please name an animal that lived at the same time as the dinosaurs and still exists today.

Some people might answer: cockroaches.

What if we add another restriction: making people feel refreshed at first glance?

Can’t you say it anymore?

Recently, in a pond in the Shuijing Park of Donghai County, Lianyungang City, Jiangsu Province, someone discovered a creature that looked very elegant. After confirmation, it was found that this creature existed for more than 200 million years, at the same time as the dinosaurs, and was called a fairy shrimp.

Aren’t they very good looking?

Seeing this, everyone may have some questions: Since we can see them in the park, can we also see them in other places? How did these fairy shrimps survive for more than 200 million years? Can they be eaten?

Today we are going to get familiar with these little guys!

What kind of animal is a fairy shrimp?

Fairy shrimp is not actually a shrimp, but an arthropod, scientifically known as "branch frontal worm", an aquatic animal belonging to the family of cyprididae. They are widely distributed around the world and can tolerate high salt levels.

They are relatively small in size, but the family is large, with more than 300 species. The colors are also different, including bright orange, red, bronze or blue. What they have in common is a pair of black eyes.

The reason why the branch-fronted worm is called a fairy shrimp is mainly because of its appearance and swimming posture. The fairy shrimp has bright and soft colors, and it looks like a fairy floating in the water, so it has such a beautiful name.

In fact, although fairy shrimps and the shrimps we eat are both arthropods, shrimps belong to the phylum Crustacea, order Decapoda, family Shrimpidae, and the two are distant relatives rather than close relatives. When shrimps swim in the water, their feet are facing downwards, while fairy shrimps have a special swimming posture, where they float on their backs in the water.

Fairy shrimps are salt-tolerant, so their small figures can be seen more or less in many high-salt lakes and coastal salt pans in the world.

There are more than 500 reported fairy shrimp production sites around the world, including China, the United States, Iran, Russia and more than 20 other countries. my country's eastern coastal salt pans, Qinghai, Tibet and southern Xinjiang salt lakes are the places where the best quality fairy shrimp eggs are produced.

Lianyungang has many saline-alkali tidal flats, so it is not surprising to find fairy shrimps. Maybe one day you can find fairy shrimps if you look carefully at the edge of the field. In fact, this little thing is not difficult to find, but it is too small and has a poor presence, so it is often ignored.

How do fairy shrimps survive?

Research has found that small animals such as fairy shrimps had already appeared on this earth 200 million years ago, and they can be found in ancient fossils.

Over such a long period of time, the dinosaurs, once the "dominant species" of the earth, have become extinct. How did the tiny fairy shrimp survive?

In fact, the life of fairy shrimp should be relatively fragile. The life cycle is generally only 2-3 months, which is very "short-lived". They grow very fast, and after several molts, they can develop into adults with complete 11 pairs of feather legs. After that, they enter the reproduction stage.

What is more strange is that some male fairy shrimps do not want to mate casually, and they directly break their genitals, and many even die as a result. Fairy shrimps also have many natural enemies, almost all carnivorous insects, crabs and mammals are their natural enemies.

In order to survive, fairy shrimps have developed three unique skills:

Special skill 1: Hibernation. After the fairy shrimp's fertilized eggs are expelled from the body, they will sink to the bottom of the pool and will not develop immediately, but will enter a dormant state. In the dry season, dormant eggs can withstand the dryness, and as long as there are suitable conditions, they will seize the opportunity to hatch and grow and develop.

Special skill 2: hatching in batches. Are natural enemies waiting to eat the hatched fairy shrimp? Then hatch them in batches, so that they will never be eaten all at once by natural enemies. And these dormant fairy shrimp eggs can survive for more than a hundred years.

Skill 3: Protective shell. Although fairy shrimp eggs are smaller than a grain of sand, their protective shell can protect them from extreme cold and heat, and they can even hatch after hiding in a water-deficient environment for many years!

‍

These may be the secrets of their ability to defeat the strong by taking advantage of the weak and gaining a better chance of survival.

Can fairy shrimp be eaten?

The answer to this question from foodies is this: fairy shrimps are not poisonous, but few people want to eat them because they are too small, with only the shell and no meat to eat...

However, humans do not want to eat fairy shrimps, but some animals raised by humans do. More than 300 species of fairy shrimps have been discovered, including artemia in freshwater and brine shrimp in seawater. However, these artemia and brine shrimp are not strictly the same species as the fairy shrimps we are talking about today, but can only be said to be close relatives.

Artemia are also very pretty and weak, but they are more like shrimps, swimming with their feet facing downwards in the water. They often appear in groups, so they are easy to be caught in groups. Studies have found that the larvae and eggs of these artemias have very high nutritional value and are high-quality bait for young fish.

In the late 1950s, after the function of Artemia as feed was discovered, Chinese researchers conducted breeding experiments on more than 10 kinds of marine fish fry and it has been widely used as live feed for fish and shrimp farming.

In addition, since Artemia is very small, it is very suitable for feeding newly hatched young fish and small ornamental fish. In particular, Artemia contains astaxanthin, which is a natural color-enhancing feed for ornamental fish. Ornamental fish fed with Artemia are brightly colored.

Therefore, Artemia is the first choice food for young fish and small and medium-sized tropical fish. Many ornamental fish enthusiasts have learned to cultivate Artemia themselves.

The study of fairy shrimp was carried out in foreign countries in the 18th century, but in my country, it was not until 1949 that researchers collected fairy shrimp in Kunming, and then there was a report on this species. The existing fairy shrimp is one of the earliest species, which has important scientific significance for the study of biological evolution.

The pictures in this article with the "Science Popularization China" watermark are all from the copyright gallery. The pictures are not authorized for reprinting.