Watching the comments, Lin Xuan curiously walked over.
Sure enough, he found a pond here.
When Lin Xuan's light shone across the pond's surface, he saw the shadow of something flash past.
Seeing this, Lin Xuan was a little surprised. He stopped walking and, disregarding the icy ground, lay down beside the pond and peered carefully into it.
The bottom of the pond was rather dim and difficult to see clearly, but one thing was certain: something was indeed moving slowly inside it.
Seeing this, Lin Xuan immediately confirmed that some kind of creature lived in the pond. As for what it was, he would only know once he got a clear look.
With that in mind, Lin Xuan got up from the ground, opened the System Mall, and exchanged it for an underwater micro-drone no bigger than his pinkie nail!
Once it appeared, Lin Xuan placed it into the water. To avoid disturbing the unknown creature beneath the surface, he deliberately let the drone descend slowly.
The pond water was very clear, so the camera's view was excellent.
When it dove to a certain depth, a group of tiny, frail-looking creatures appeared on screen.
They were around ten centimeters long, their bodies translucent like those of the Libo blind loach.
Under the light, their bodies were transparent as jade, with their organs and blood vessels clearly visible.
(Whoa, there are actually fish in this pond!)
(Have they been living here all along, never seeing sunlight year-round?)
(Streamer, what kind of fish are these?)
"If I'm not mistaken, these should be cave fish."
(Cave fish? Are they called that just because they live in caves? That's way too casual.)
(Haha, I think the name suits this kind of fish quite well.)
"Cave fish have small eyes and no visual function. Their entire bodies, including their heads and tails, are covered in sensitive tactile organs, allowing them to sense things they cannot see."
They showed an obvious trend of degeneration, mainly reflected in features such as the distribution of body scales and the relative size of lateral-line scales. For example, the body scales of giant-whiskered golden-line gill fish were clearly smaller than their lateral-line scales.
In species with relatively well-developed body scales, the lateral scales were either larger and covered the entire trunk in overlapping rows, with some species retaining sheaths at the base of their dorsal fins, such as the small-eyed golden-line gill fish, or their lateral-line scales were equal to or slightly larger than the scales above and below the lateral line. In species with smaller body scales, the lateral-line scales were noticeably larger than those above and below the lateral line.
In species with more degenerated body scales, the scales not only became thinner and finer, but were also hidden beneath the skin in relatively orderly embedded arrangements, covering the entire trunk. The bases of their dorsal fins were bare and lacked sheaths, as with hunchbacked golden-line gill fish.
The most extreme example of scale degeneration was transparent golden-line barb fish and the like. Their bodies were completely naked and scaleless, with only extremely thin remnants of lateral-line scales left beneath the skin, where the lateral-line pores remained.
From this, it could be seen that lateral-line scales degenerated much more slowly than the rest of the body scales. This allometric scale-degeneration phenomenon also existed among other groups of cyprinids, possibly representing a shared evolutionary trend in the degeneration of cyprinid scales.
The body-surface scales of the Libo blind loach had basically degenerated completely. Under a microscope, only an extremely small number of scales could be found hidden beneath the skin on the back of its head. They could only be seen after dissection or careful scraping, and the loach's scales had essentially degenerated into part of its skin.
Cave-dwelling animals that lived in completely lightless underground streams lacked body pigment, except for hemoglobin, and were semi-transparent. The Libo blind loach, for instance, appeared pure white and transparent in the water during nighttime surveys. Under a light, its living body was transparent as jade, with its organs and blood vessels clearly visible.
Based on the literature, Lin Xuan gave the viewers a brief explanation.
(So that's how it is. Still, these cave fish look pretty cute.)
(The person above probably calls everything they see cute.)
(But they've lived in caves their whole lives without sunlight. Wouldn't that be lonely?)
"Actually, every species has its own way of surviving."
"For example, there are transparent fish in the deep sea too, because they also go their whole lives without sunlight."
"I never expected to find creatures like this after entering this cave."
"Perhaps there are other things to see deeper in the cave."
Lin Xuan was also filled with anticipation.
Just as Lin Xuan was about to continue onward, a sudden du-luo, du-luo sound reached his ears.
(What was that sound? It was a little scary.)
(Hearing that sound suddenly come from inside this cave gave me a fright, even though I'm only watching through the livestream.)
Lin Xuan was also puzzled by the sound.
After thinking it over, Lin Xuan decided to go take a look.
He followed the direction from which the sound had come.
Under the beam of his flashlight, a squirrel-like creature soon appeared before everyone's eyes.
(Is that a squirrel?)
(No, why does this squirrel-like creature seem to have wings?)
(Its big black eyes and nearly snow-white fur make it look so cute!)
(Seriously, I think this squirrel-like creature is much cuter than that group of cave fish from earlier.)
When everyone saw how adorable the squirrel-like creature was, they all cried out that it was cute.
At that moment, Ink Plum Like Painting appeared as well.
She gave an explanation in the livestream room: (This should be a Pteromys xanthipes. Pteromys xanthipes is also called the Orange-footed Flying Squirrel, Yellow-footed Flying Squirrel, Cold-howling Bird, Cold-howling Bug, or Cold-dangling Bug. It is a rodent.)
(Although it's called the Cold-howling Bird, it isn't actually a bird. It's because it can fly.)
(??? A squirrel-like animal can actually fly?)
"Ink Plum Like Painting is right. This is indeed a Pteromys xanthipes."
"However, they don't truly fly through the sky. They merely glide."
"Also, flying squirrels are not squirrels. They are small animals from the suborder Anomaluromorpha."
Lin Xuan explained.
(Oh, oh, no wonder this squirrel-like animal looked familiar. So it's a Pteromys xanthipes. I've seen videos of them on Little Broken Station, and the ones in those videos were pets.)
(As long as you hold out your hand, it will fly down from somewhere high onto your hand.)
(But these creatures are also prone to shutting down emotionally. If it flies over and you fail to catch it, it might become depressed and then commit suicide.)
(???)
(Isn't that way too cute? It's like when your girlfriend gets mad and you just can't coax her into calming down.)
Congratulations, Host. You have successfully unlocked the Pteromys xanthipes illustrated guide. Rating: S. Pteromys xanthipes: Also known as the Orange-footed Flying Squirrel, Yellow-footed Flying Squirrel, Cold-howling Bird, Cold-howling Bug, Cold-dangling Bug, and Hé Gǔn. {Chinese scientific name: Pteromys xanthipes. Latin scientific name: Trogopterus xanthipes. Kingdom: Animal Kingdom. Phylum: Phylum Chordata. Subphylum: Subphylum Vertebrata. Class: Mammalia. Subclass: Theria.
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