Giant Pyrosome
oceana.org
oceana.org
I'm not going in there. That's scary.
Thanks for the explanation! Slightly less freaked out now.
https://www.amazon.com/Across-Bridge-Understanding-Origin-Ve...
> When the animal or plant dies, it stops exchanging carbon with its environment, and thereafter the amount of 14C it contains begins to decrease as the 14C undergoes radioactive decay. Measuring the amount of 14C in a sample from a dead plant or animal, such as a piece of wood or a fragment of bone, provides information that can be used to calculate when the animal or plant died.
Maybe sequencing DNA from a lot of the individual organisms and counting how many differences there are? Older colonies should accumulate the differences, right?
If that's the case then old colony would have more differences between the individuals than a new colony.
Original:
FWIW they ended up seeming harmless, my "neighbors" were swimming with them
"The Underground Express was a method of transportation employed by the native Argonians in Black Marsh. It involved travelers submerging themselves into a Rootworm's stomach through their breathing holes. The travelers could then leave the Underground Express via the breathing holes as well. The travelers would then travel inside a Rootworm's stomach during their migrations. Notable exits and entrances to the Underground Express during the winter could be found at Gideon and Hixinoag."
- The Argonian Account, Book III
As far as aging though, I would take it with a grain of salt. Strangely, aging doesn't seem to be caused by accumulated DNA copying errors.
Otherwise, each generation of humans would be genetically worse off than the previous generation.
The quote below came to mind.
"Imagine how many times DNA has been reproduced, not just during your lifetime in your own body but since human life began! To understand how amazing this is, consider what would happen if you used a photocopier to copy a document and then used the new copy to make the next copy. If you did this repeatedly, the quality of the copies would deteriorate and eventually become unreadable. Happily, the quality of our DNA does not deteriorate or wear out when our cells repeatedly divide. Why? Because our cells have many ways of repairing DNA copy errors. If that were not true, mankind would long ago have become a pile of dust" - Source: https://www.jw.org/en/library/magazines/g200605/Why-Do-We-Gr...
This article has a picture of a sea turtle taking a nice chomp out of a smaller one. Maybe nothing that eats them ever feels like eating the whole the colony. It would seem it's pretty tough to tear it.
Nope.
It's particularly important not to do that when the thread is fresh, because threads are so responsive to initial conditions.