Monday, March 26, 2012

Tropical Sea Cucumber Vs. Maru the cat!

UPDATE! thanks to Dave Pawson for the citation! Go to this open access paper by Peter Glynn from 1965 on "Active movements and other aspects of biology of Astichopus and Leptosynapta. Biol. Bull. 129: 106-127." to read the full account!
From the abstract: Astichopus does this in response to sudden changes in changes in salinity concentration, oxygen deficiency and other "bodily disturbances." The movement below may be a prelude to evisceration.. which I've discussed here.

The Strange Rolling Behavior of Sea Cucumbers.. now with UPDATED further videos! 

and MORE! (updated March 2022!)
Internet sensation Maru doing what he does...
Now who is doing more? Should a sea cucumber be more active than a cat? :-)
Discuss.
Seriously though, I've never heard nor seen of a sea cucumber doing that rolling in the sand action. I this another thing that naturalists see that may not have been recorded before??

2 comments:

Bob Knaus said...

On page 391 of their second edition of "Reef Creature Identification" Paul Humann and Ned Deloach state "This creature can be quite active, and may be observed crawling or even rolling over and over."

Unfortunately, no Internet link availabble.

ChrisM said...

thanks!