It Takes A Sea Spider's Guts To Pump Blood

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Sea spiders have a very unconventional body. A very small abdomen surrounded comparatively very long legs. And due to its small size, the creature has nothing to call a proper respiratory system. Instead of a nose and a pair of lungs, the gasses move in the body by the process of diffusion. Also, as recently discovered, the sea spider's blood circulation system is no less weird.

According to an article on Science News, the sea spider also uses its guts to pump blood throughout the body. The spider eats through its proboscis and then the food travels to the digestive tracts. The lumps of digesting food move through the digestive tracts and this causes blood to be pushed throughout the body. Hence the heart of this particular spider is assisted in circulation by the food it eats.

The discovery was made by Art Woods, evolutionary physiologist of the University of Montana. He presented his paper titled 'Oxygen dependant limits to body size in giant sea spiders' in the annual meeting of the 'Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology'.

In the paper, the size of giant sea spiders was studied in respect to oxygen availability and absorption. The team was testing sea spiders by depriving them of oxygen. And then it was observed that in order to compensate for the loss of oxygen, gut movement increased. This lead to the conclusion that gut movement aids in circulating oxygenated blood throughout the spider's body.

Sea spiders aren't technically spiders and more so, by employing such a novel mechanism for blood circulation, they've set themselves apart from not only spiders but also other creatures. This discovery proves that the oceans are still a treasure house of exploration. There is a lot about the oceans that we don't know. And may be it will take as much time to explore the oceans fully, as it would take to fully explore the sky.