Nature is full of object lesson of metal money that will go to any lengths to survive , as survival of the primed morphs into survival of the extremest . Some Antarctic moss has found what must be the most disgusting possible natural selection tactics .
According to Professor Sharon Robinson of Australia ’s University of Woolongong , the moss in question grows in a particularly nutrient - poor bandage of eastern Antarctica . Since the soil is little more than moxie and gravel , the moss must be finding a firm source of nutrients from somewhere else , and Robinson ’s analytic thinking of the moss ’s chemical composition revealed nitrogen concentrations that had passed from algae and krill into a marine predator .
In other word , these N chemicals had once been part of a penguin ’s meal , which means the penguin must have excreted the nitrogen back out for it to end up in the moss . Penguin poop would indeed have the right set of nutrient the moss would need to survive . The only job is that this region of Antarctica has n’t been home to penguins for G of class . And this is where an already kind of gross nature level takes a act for the all - time disgusting , as Professor Robinson explained to BBC News :
“ Between 3,000 and 8,000 years ago , on the land site where the moss is now growing , there used to be [ Adelie ] penguins . There ’s fossil evidence to support that , and the little pebble that the penguins use to make their nest are actually still there . The other thing that ’s still there is the penguin poo . And because Antarctica is so cold , those nutrients have just stayed frozen in the soil ; they ’re now flow this moss . ”
You have it away , somewhere around the fourth or 5th repast of millennia - old penguin crap , I might just go with extinction . Congratulations , moss of eastern Antarctica – you are officially right smart more hardcore than I could ever go for or want to be .
For more , check outBBC News . Image by giladr onFlickr .
AntarcticaBiologyPenguinScience
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