With a name like Hydra vulgaris, you know
we're talking about a special organism. And
indeed, this little freshwater predator rips
itself a new mouth hole to gobble its prey...
and now scientists know how.
The hydra genus gets its name from the mythological
monster, that multiheaded serpent with the
frustrating power to grow back multiple heads
for each one you lop off. And indeed, the
real-life hydra boasts fascinating regenerative
powers as well -- including the Gremlins-like
ability to reproduce via asexual budding.
And then there's that wound mouth. After incapacitating
its prey with tentacled poison barbs, the
creature tears a page from the John Carpenter
playbook and rips its body open into a hungry,
gaping maw sometimes wider than the creature's
actual body. Like some fever-dream horror
glimpsed in a Flemish Hell painting, the Hydra
gobbles up its prey and the wound mouth heals
itself over the doomed victim, reverting to
a continuous sheet of tissue.
Now the basic process here and the chemical
triggers involved aren't new to science, but
nobody ever figured out how the wound mouth
worked -- until now. In a study published
this month in the Biophysical Journal, researchers
from the University of California stare deep
into the feeding hole of Hydra vulgaris.
They engineered transgenic hydras with fluorescent
proteins in their endodermal and ectodermal
cell layers. This created "glowing" skin layers
to illuminate the mouth-opening mechanics.
As it turns out, the cells don't move around
-- they actually change their shape in order
to birth these wondrous mouths. Cell nuclei
even appear to deform in the process. Radially-oriented
fibers in the tissue contract to stretch the
cells apart, similar to the muscular behavior
in the iris of a human eye.
More revelations await the researchers as
future studies reveal the precise inner workings
of the entire mouthing process of the hydra
-- as well as, perhaps, the evolutionary reason
for such a unique feeding mechanism.
Does that fill you with wonder and horror?
Let us know, and if you crave more weird science
goodness, be sure to check out Now.HowStuffWorks.com
each and every day.
