#2872: Hydrothermal Vents explain

[An undersea landscape is shown. A rock formation goes up from the middle part op the bottom of the panel. The top of the formation has five “hot-smoker” chimneys of different heights, almost like a hand with the thumb to the right, but the middle finger being the shortest and the “index finger” being somewhat longer than all the others. From all five chimneys thick gray smoke is emitted. The smoke rises almost vertically to start from all five, and the four to the left have their smoke combine rather early and it bulges to the left. The rightmost chimney’s smoke bends to the right and only merges with the combined smoke from the others at the top right. Below the chimneys their interior in the rock formation is indicated with dotted lines and the inside of these chimneys are thus displayed. At the bottom all five merge into a large cavity (shown with dotted lines) inside the rock formation. In this cavity there is a liquid in which several items float around, most notably two Santa Claus hats and two large bones surrounded by five smaller blobs of material and several smaller specks. On the outside on the rock formation grow four types of sea-life, a sponge and some sea lilies or the like, one on the left side and three on the right. To the left two fish are swimming near the rock and close to it on the right there is an octopus. There are three labels with lines pointing to the smoke, to the vents, and to the cavity in the rock formation containing the Santa hats and fragments.]

Top label: Smoke

Middle label: Chimneys

Bottom label: Santas being digested

[Caption below the panel:]

Ocean fact: Hydrothermal vent black smokers actually evolved as predatory chimney mimics to feed on benthic Santas.