Liquid Bones?
In 2003 Taylor and co-author William M. Kier, professor of biology at UNC, described related research in the journal Science on blue crabs, which live entirely in water.
Those crabs were found to use a similar skeletal support mechanism based on internal water pressure.
For the land-based blackbacks, Taylor said, "One fact that may be important is that, by filling their gut with air rather than water, it makes the newly molted animal a lot lighter.
"On land, where they have to overcome gravity, that may be more significant."
Taylor notes that some insects swallow air to inflate their bodies when shedding their shells, but it's unknown whether they also use the air for skeletal support.
Study co-author Kier said, "At this point, we don't know how widespread pneumohydrostatic skeletons are.
"But they indeed may have been crucial to the process by which marine animals escaped from the sea millions of years ago and came to live on land."
Free Email News Updates
Sign up for our Inside National Geographic newsletter. Every two weeks we'll send you our top stories and pictures (see sample).
|
SOURCES AND RELATED WEB SITES
|
