The evolution of insect swarms from XNUMX million years ago

Chapter 32 Swordfish-shaped Hurd shrimp
  The soldiers who were running back and forth among the remaining anomalocaridids, cutting off each anomalocaridids with their sickle limbs, gathered together again. Some of them came up to guard the floating mother nest, while the other part slowly dived down, watching with a pair of compound eyes. Towards the bottom of the sea.

In the abyss, a huge figure flashed past, and then, a line of water drew across the dark night. You can vaguely see the afterimages caused by the high-speed swing of the leaf-shaped swimming legs, which proves that it is also a kind of shrimp. But its body shape is more slender. At first glance, it should be more than three meters long.

Before Lin Yi could react, the purple-black body shot out from the abyss like an arrow from the string, and then there was severe pain from the nervous system - that was the body of a soldier being hit by something. The exoskeleton immediately broke apart when the thing hit the center.

The blue horseshoe crab blood spread in the water, drawing a line of blood wherever the figure passed. Bing Hao's body seemed to be penetrated by some sharp object again, and his whole body was hung on the sharp object like a skewer of candied haws. This also slowed down the figure a little, allowing Lin Yi to see its appearance clearly through Bing Hao's compound eyes.

It has an oval body similar to those of the previous Anomalocaris, but it is more slender and more streamlined. Even the eye stalks have a pair of eye sockets with a special structure, allowing it to combine the pair of blood-red compound eyes together. The eyestalks are retracted to avoid the protruding eyestalks from increasing resistance. The head is covered with a huge head shell like the Poseidon Helmet Shrimp. There is no doubt that it is also a Herd shrimp.

But the front end of the head shell became slender, with a sharp sword-like structure growing forward, making its appearance somewhat similar to later swordfish. At this time, Bing Hao was pierced by the protruding sword edge and could not move.

However, it only swung its sword twice, tearing Bing Hao's body in half from the point of penetration, breaking away from the sword, and falling weakly downwards, dragging a trail of azure horseshoe crab blood.

The swing of its swimming legs on its side made Lin Yi notice that its swimming legs were not in the shape of oval blades like those of ordinary anomalocaridids, but rather had a "swept wing" structure that was as sharp and long as a scimitar and slightly bent backwards.

The tail has no whiskers, but four tail leaves arranged in an X shape that are swept back at a small angle to maintain the balance of the body.

Later research, at least before Lin Yi's rebirth, did not find that any dinosaur shrimp had evolved a structure similar to the swordfish's snout. Otherwise, the ancestor of the swordfish ecological niche would not have had the Carlo's helmet of the placoderm. Fish, it should be this thing.

Including the sword snout and tail lobes, the swordfish-shaped Hurd shrimp is close to four meters in size, far larger than any kind of dinosaur shrimp or even any kind of true arthropod that has been discovered in later generations.

The appendage structure at the back and lower part of its head is slightly different from that of normal Anomalocaris, but it has the same four-radiated mouth cone, but it is larger than ordinary Anomalocaris. When fully opened, it can even swallow a whole soldier.

The remnants of the ordinary Hurd shrimps nearby seemed to have found a backbone, and they gathered around the swordfish-shaped Hurd shrimps, and by the way surrounded the group of soldiers from all directions, trying to drive them to the swordfish-shaped Hurd shrimps. On the collision course.

This also further proves that they are another eusocial nest group, and the degree of evolution is significantly higher than that of the Orthogonite nest group. Complex grade differentiation has appeared, and there are tactics based on grade differentiation.

The swordfish-shaped Hurd shrimp swung its rear body segments, and the leaf legs that swept back at a small angle pushed its body through the water in an arc, turned its sword edge, and charged towards the group of soldiers again.

Compared with the straight helical stone that relies on water jets and is protected by a solid shell like a head-on charge of a plate armored cavalry, the sprint of the swordfish-shaped Hed shrimp is more like a swift light cavalry and is relatively flexible. Under the cover of the ordinary anomalies nearby, the huge body drew through arcs, its head swept across, and the sword blade accurately struck several soldiers in front. Rather than relying on the long sword-like snout to pierce the prey's body in people's stereotype, later generations of swordfish tended to chop with their snouts to stun smaller prey. Now it seems that the swordfish has a majestic shape. The same goes for German shrimp. But the highly specialized blades on their heads make their slashing power even more terrifying.

The sword edge slashed through, and although the hit soldier was not directly split into two pieces, he was temporarily incapacitated due to internal injuries and floated powerlessly in the water. The following ordinary anomalocaridids immediately stepped forward, clamped the bodies of these soldiers with their head appendages, bit down the awls, and decapitated the soldiers with staggered tooth plates like blood droplets.

The remaining soldiers in the rear immediately spread out to avoid the attack of the swordfish-shaped Hed shrimp. But it was unexpectedly accurate. While rushing left and right, more than ten soldiers were struck by the blade of the swordfish-shaped Hed shrimp, and were killed immediately.

The headless remains dragged a long blue trail and fell to the seabed.

Lin Yi suddenly felt that something was wrong. In order to avoid increasing resistance, the swordfish-shaped Hurd shrimp's whole body was highly streamlined. Even the compound eyes and eye stalks were retracted in special eye sockets when sprinting. This also meant that when they sprinted, The field of vision will inevitably be limited, and it will not be able to hit the soldiers one by one as accurately as if the lock is unlocked.

Thinking about it, he had some guesses. Above him, several compound eyes that filtered foreign matter swept across the battlefield, observing the situation below. Sure enough, in the corner of the battlefield, several figures that were slightly different from ordinary anomalies appeared in the compound eyes.

At first glance, they were almost the same as ordinary anomalocaridids, but upon closer inspection, Lin Yi discovered that their head armor was slightly smaller, and behind the head armor, there was a large, stemless middle eye, which was connected to both sides. The compound eyes on the eyestalks together form a powerful vision system.

In later generations, most creatures invariably chose two imaging eyes. Those creatures with more than two eyes mostly also had two imaging eyes and multiple photosensitive eyes, or simply all photosensitive eyes.

But in the Cambrian, this was not the case. Many shrimps, especially benthic species, have three image-forming compound eyes, two small compound eyes with 360 degrees of blind angles on the eye stalks, and a large, stalkless middle eye that faces forward and upward. Even the opal worm and the unicorn shrimp Zhang's unicorn have five compound eyes and can see in five directions at the same time.

As for these Herder shrimps with three eyes, the third middle eye is exaggeratedly large, and the compound eyes on the two eye stalks are also very developed.

At this time, they were floating near the water surface, scanning the battlefield below with their well-developed compound eyes. It was most likely that they were providing vision for the swordfish-shaped Hed shrimp and pointing out the direction of the sprint.

Thinking of this, Binghao swung his paddling feet and swam toward the surface of the water. With his limbs wide open, he rushed straight towards the three-eyed Hed shrimp. The well-developed middle eyes of these Hurd shrimps also saw the approaching soldiers. In an instant, the remaining ordinary Anomalocaris and the swordfish-shaped Hurd shrimp stopped moving, and turned their heads to advance near the water. The battlefield was like this. Move toward shallower waters.

(End of this chapter)