Parrot fish: all the sand in the Maldives is the result of these fish's toilet (7 photos)

I wish I could bury myself in the warm fine sand and not know that this entire beach is the result of the hard work of parrotfish. Or more precisely, their digestive system. Yes, all those white beaches that look like a dream vacation are fish excrement. How did this happen?





That's how much sand they had to digest to make an island...

Parrotfish are tough guys, even if you can't tell by their stupid faces. Almost a hundred species of colorful fish plow the waters of coral reefs with a smile made of horny plates in their mouths.



Your face when you wanted to shit, but ended up with a luxury resort.

These plates provided the animals with a bird-like nickname, because they painfully resemble the beaks of their flying namesakes. It was not for nothing that the fish acquired such a chirping. Two plates on the upper and lower jaws are a weapon of destruction, inexorable and indestructible!





That feeling when the sand in your intestines is too big.

The mouth of a fish performs the same function as a bird's beak - it splits, scrapes, crushes and crushes. True, there are no nuts or pits in the sea, so sea parrots use their tools on corals, mollusks and stones. With a cheerful crunch, the contents of hard shells and calcium skeletons are ground into dust and sent to the belly.



One small bite for a fish, a big tourist business for humanity.

Along with soft delicacies, shell fragments and corals themselves also end up in the stomach. It is clear that such a mess of durable materials cannot be digested. But the fish decided: there is no point in wasting the good stuff. The durable fragments turned into abrasives. These are things that help digest food. This practice is not new: crocodiles and some birds deliberately swallow stones so that they grind the contents of the gastrointestinal tract like millstones.



WE ARE SOIL!

But shells and corals are not eternal either. The powerful walls of the stomach grind them to the state of sand. That same - white, clean. Now nothing prevents the ground stones from moving through the digestive system and very effectively (and spectacularly) being removed from the body.



Here's some fresh, clean sand for you! Enjoy!

The parrot passes so much rock through itself that it is time to consider it an industrial reef crusher. One individual 20-50 centimeters long creates hundreds of kilograms of sand per year. And a full-fledged population can produce up to 85% of all the sand in its territory!



And here is the process of the appearance of beaches.

So when you are on tropical islands, and sand squeaks on your teeth, remember where it came from!