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Journey of Life - Seas of Life 7
Steve travels back 3.8 billion years to when life began. Journeying round the oceans, he explores life's first laboratory and discovers how the incredible variety of sea creatures arose, from the first microbes to hagfish and dolphins.
Its flexible armor allowed body segments to be specialized for different tasks, and with jointed limbs, they could move fast. But the trilobite's real trump card was its eyes. The first to see in detail, this was an evolutionary bombshell.
For the first time, predators and prey could see each other coming. Eyes became both a hunting tool and the first line of defense. With them, arose super bugs. The eye generated a deadly race, as each was driven to outdo the other. The rush to stay ahead sparked an explosion of new life.
This competition has led to some extreme bugs and some extreme eyes. These are the most sophisticated of any creature on the planet, and they belong to the mantis shrimp.
Whereas our vision just uses three-color pigments--red, blue and yellow, mantis shrimps use at least eight. Mantis shrimps need such hi-tech equipment to hunt their prey, and more importantly to avoid each other in this colorful coral world.
For the mantis shrimp is armed with nature's most earth-shattering weapon--a claw turned club. It's a smash-and-grab attack. I'll be rather pleased to think we'd evolved from such an impressive creature, but no such luck. By comparison our ancestor's a bit embarrassing.
"Nobody knows. But wherever I'm a-going, I'll go, search a jungle"
"Unlike the super bugs with their hard exoskeletons or even the super snails with their hard shells, I'm hard on the inside. I have an internalskeleton based around my backbone."
My backbone gives my body a strengthening rod, without it, I'll be like a sack of spuds. It was another crucial milestone on life's journey, marking the rise of a whole new group, our lot--the vertebrates.
"And in all those millions of years, trilobites and ammonites were cruising the seas, little vertebrates were busy evolving away."
And this is it, the ancestor of all the backboned animals, including we humans, a sea squirt, nothing more than a bag of jelly.
关键字:英语文库
生词表:
Steve travels back 3.8 billion years to when life began. Journeying round the oceans, he explores life's first laboratory and discovers how the incredible variety of sea creatures arose, from the first microbes to hagfish and dolphins.
Its flexible armor allowed body segments to be specialized for different tasks, and with jointed limbs, they could move fast. But the trilobite's real trump card was its eyes. The first to see in detail, this was an evolutionary bombshell.
For the first time, predators and prey could see each other coming. Eyes became both a hunting tool and the first line of defense. With them, arose super bugs. The eye generated a deadly race, as each was driven to outdo the other. The rush to stay ahead sparked an explosion of new life.
This competition has led to some extreme bugs and some extreme eyes. These are the most sophisticated of any creature on the planet, and they belong to the mantis shrimp.
Whereas our vision just uses three-color pigments--red, blue and yellow, mantis shrimps use at least eight. Mantis shrimps need such hi-tech equipment to hunt their prey, and more importantly to avoid each other in this colorful coral world.
For the mantis shrimp is armed with nature's most earth-shattering weapon--a claw turned club. It's a smash-and-grab attack. I'll be rather pleased to think we'd evolved from such an impressive creature, but no such luck. By comparison our ancestor's a bit embarrassing.
"Nobody knows. But wherever I'm a-going, I'll go, search a jungle"
"Unlike the super bugs with their hard exoskeletons or even the super snails with their hard shells, I'm hard on the inside. I have an internalskeleton based around my backbone."
My backbone gives my body a strengthening rod, without it, I'll be like a sack of spuds. It was another crucial milestone on life's journey, marking the rise of a whole new group, our lot--the vertebrates.
"And in all those millions of years, trilobites and ammonites were cruising the seas, little vertebrates were busy evolving away."
And this is it, the ancestor of all the backboned animals, including we humans, a sea squirt, nothing more than a bag of jelly.
关键字:英语文库
生词表:
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