2023-05-02 21:58:42
I’m bored as hell!
We use this colloquial expression to despise a very special state of mind related, basically, to boredom and weariness generated by inactivity.
However, it does not respond to the biological reality of these bivalves. In fact, and quite contrary to what their calm appearance indicates, oysters hide a most surprising adventurous past.
The origin of his fame
Oysters have been dragging this terrible social reputation (not gastronomic) since the beginning of our civilization. It is enough to remember the law of ostracism that, instituted by Cleisthenes in Athens in the fifth century BC, condemned to exile those citizens that popular sovereignty considered harmful or dangerous.
The term itself refers to oysters in a double sense. On the one hand, the vows were written on a in ancient times (ὄστρακον), i.e. a hard surface that was usually an oyster shell, clam, or any other robust bivalve (including bits of pottery or eggshells). This was because papyrus, which had to be imported from Egypt, was too expensive a luxury and was reserved for nobler writings.
On the other hand, ostracism implied a second allusion to our bivalves: the sentence implied the deprivation of something so essential for a purely social animal such as their personal and professional relationships.
With an oyster, then, the criminal was condemned to be alone and bored, precisely, “like an oyster.”
Why is being an oyster boring?
The physiology of an animal is conditioned by the possession of a certain blueprint, that is, its functioning and its relations with the environment are limited by its morphology. If you want it in more understandable language, “what can be done is done”, and the shape of the oysters does not offer very suggestive possibilities.
Being enclosed in a shell of hard, rigid and heavy calcium carbonate does not seem, from the outset, a good starting point to have a lot of partying. It is an architectural plan that, in the case of some adult bivalves such as Tridacna gigascan weigh several hundred kilos, with which its possibilities of movement and displacement are highly constrained.
Central Intelligence Agency / Flickr
In addition, some species of this group live fixed to the substrate through a byssus (that “scouring pad” of mussels) that further guarantees their immobility. Others choose an alternative way to get away from the madding crowd and bury themselves for life in sandy or muddy bottoms. They only guarantee their survival by removing some siphons with which, like periscopes, they access oxygen and food particles from the water.
With this staging, nothing suggests an intense and suggestive social life. In principle, fun is neither there nor expected.
But it hasn’t always been like this…
A hidden, multifaceted and transgressive youth
With the exception that they are smaller, stubborn, more defenseless and with softer features, our babies are born practically the same as their parents. That is why it is so difficult for us to think of radically different life cycles, where children look more like an alien than “dad” or “mom”.
But the reality is that most animal species have much more complex life cycles than euplacental mammals. These cycles imply passage through larval phases whose anatomies are completely different from that of adults. So much so that, sometimes, it seems incredible that they belong to the same individual. Neither morphology, nor habitat, nor diet, nor way of moving or interacting make us think that it is the same animal as the one we observed days (even hours) before.
Something like that happens to oysters. Its first larval phase is quite a spectacle. I am referring to the trochophore larva, with a top-like morphology (hence its name) that allows it to move at full speed through the water as part of the plankton. Ornamented in a very curious way, it is most fashion of the entire zoo cast. With its central band of cilia resembling a “Hawaiian skirt” and an erect tuft of apical cilia reminiscent of the punk Londoner, he swims freely entering new territories forbidden to his elders.
Jesus Cobaleda / Shutterstock
The second is not far behind in terms of its desire to live life: the veliger larva. Also planktonic, and already with an incipient shell, it uses its veil (an organ composed of two large ciliated lobes) for active swimming. During her long period of life, she embodies the role of explorer par excellence of new territories, which contributes significantly to the increase in the area of distribution of the species.
At full speed on the back of a fish
As if that were not enough, in some families of bivalves (Unionidae and Margaritiferidae) it is necessary to add a third larval phase, the glochid. This one is for risky activities. With their hooks and their adhesive filament, they are anchored to the fins and gill cavities of fish to achieve high speed movements. It is a third way of getting to know the world, this time by “scrounging” the energy cost, which is borne by the fish that propels the movement.
But this intense, exciting and fun whirl of activity doesn’t last forever. When the time comes to “settle down”, the larvae take the expression literally. They go to the bottom, abandon the exciting pelagic life and settle to become calm, calm, placid and serene benthic adults. In this new vital phase, they are not interested in anything except eating and generating gametes that close the cycle.
If it were in their hand, the oysters would quite possibly hang the “do not disturb” sign on the surface of their shell.
It’s not that they’re boring, it’s that they must be exhausted.
#life #oyster #boring