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The sea is a very different world. Unlike animals on land that we often identify limbs and fur,some of the animals that live here seem to come from a different world. Unlike your usual fish and crustaceans, the animals below don’t have the typical fins or limbs. Some look more like plants than animals while others are just too alien looking to believe.
Sponge
No, not the kind you clean up with. Sea sponges are organisms that don’t have any organs. However they do have a complex internal connection of channels that are lined with cells. Water is pumped though these channels and food is filtered out. A small part of this simple organism can survive even if it breaks off its main mass by forming its own base. Many consider sponges as the first kind of animal that ever existed.
Sea Cucumber
Even their names would make you think that they’re not animals. These creatures live in seafloors and spend most of their time lurking around catching plankton and algae with tentacles in their mouths. One of the strangest features of this animal is that when it feels threatened, it shoots out its own internal organs at its attacker and quickly makes a run for it. What’s even more amazing is that its internal organs grow back after a few weeks and it can use it again when threated.
Coral
Corals are actually alive and are not just colorful rock formations under the water. Millions of coral polyps gather, secrete a hard outer skeleton made from limestone, and die on top of each other to create coral reefs. Live polyps feed on tiny fishes and zoo plankton and catch them with small tentacles that come out of their mouth. Coral reefs play a very important role in the backbone of the ocean’s ecosystem and astounding biodiversity.
Sand Dollars
Many of us remember collecting these as rough, white colored disks when we go to the beach. Live sand dollars have a dark purple color and are covered with little spines. They feed on crab larvae and plankton. They also use them as gills and to burrow themselves into the sand. Certain fish species and sea stars are the sand dollars worst nightmare.
Giant Tube Worms
These strange creatures live in hydrothermal vents or cracks found deep in the ocean floor that let out volcanically heated water. Bacteria that lives inside them processes the water and takes out nutrients that keeps them alive. As larvae, the have stomachs that ingest the bacteria which feeds them for the rest of their lives. They grow exoskeletons once grown and, although alive, they never eat again.
Sea Butterflies
They look absolutely nothing like butterflies, but they do have appendages that look like wings. These animals are as small as a grain of sand and play a huge part in feeding the different species in the water. They’re classified as zooplanktons, which are known to be the base of the ocean’s food chain. Different species of sea animals and even birds are dependent on these tiny creatures.
Most of the time, creatures from the deepest part of the ocean would give us chills because of strange and eerie they look. However, not all of them look that odd. Some actually look pretty cute.
The deep sea Grimpoteuthis octopus looks so innocent and sweet that it was actually given a nickname after a Disney cartoon character, Dumbo. Dumbo octopuses have protruding fins above a pair of huge eyes, which actually make them resemble Dumbo’sears. They propel themselves upward using these ear-like fins and looking like how Dumbo flew in the movie.
They were first seen by the Okeanos Explorer, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) research vessel which uses a remotely operated vehicle to dive down into very deep parts of the seas and oceans and even reaching the ocean floor. They captured footage of the octopus in the Mexican Gulf. The NOAA team then shared their discovery with the world through social media.
The footage of the Dumbo octopus is captivating. The specimen floats off in the vast, dark water, showing its natural behavior. One specific detail about the Dumbo octopus discovered in the videos was its different way of coiling its tentacles from otheroctopuses.
Besides the Gulf of Mexico, these octopuses have also been seen in the deep sea areas ofPapua, New Guinea, Oregon, California, Monterey Bay, Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines. They come in different sizes, a specimen was actually recorded to have been more than six feet long. However they are usually around 8 to 12 inches long.
Like all strange deep sea creatures that are given light, this strange animal was seen in a video taken at an oil rig somewhere in the Mexican gulf. We’ve only explored about 5% of the world’s oceans, so strange creatures are always being spotted by underwater cameras, especially when they go down to very deep depths. However, the creature seen at the oil rig is actually not that new of a discovery.
What looked like a moving whale placenta was actually a rare deep-sea jellyfish that was noted in 1967 by F.S. Russell, a marine biologist. The jellyfish is called the Deepstaria Enigmatica and resembles a blob that floats along the water. Not a lot is known about these jellyfishes, mostly because they stay in very deep parts of the ocean and they’re very difficult to study in the wild.
The Deepstaria Enigmatica actually looks like a helpless sheet of fabric that depends on the water’s movement. However, later in the video, it showed that the jellyfish had large gonads or sex organs, which is strange for jellyfishes. Another thing that we can notice on the video is what looks like a net. This is said to be the Deepstaria’s nerve network that’s connected to its digestive system. As it floats along the water, prey ends up getting tangled inside their large, fabric-like bell. It then wraps its bell around it and stings it to death.
So this deep-sea monster isn’t really that much of a monster after all.
Researchers in Australia are now looking for a “mysterious giant sea monster” that ate a 9 foot long great white shark. They had previously planted a tracking device on the 9 foot great white to monitor its behavior, vital statistics and swimming patters. However, a few weeks ago, the 9 foot shark’s tracking device ended up on shore.
The researchers also noticed something strange. Analysis from the tracker showed that the shark suddenly experienced a rapid rise in temperature. It also swiftly dove down to 580-meters or 1,900 feet under the waves. Scientists explained that the sudden rise of 30 degrees from the shark’s original temperature is because it entered a different animal’s digestive system. The unexpected dive could also be described as the larger animal’s descent to the deep. After the shark disappeared, the tracking device was found about two and a half miles from the area where the great white was tagged.
Dave Riggs, a documentaryfilmmaker for "Hunt for the Super Predator", said that he was blown away with the data taken from the shark’s tracking device. Everyone started asking who, or what, could have caused the 9 foot shark to disappear. The answer is pretty simple. Naturally, smaller fishes get eaten by bigger fishes. According to the researchers, larger sharks were seen around the area where the shark disappeared. The also added that these sharks are so big that they could have easily eaten another great white shark and they’re also able to swim down to depths monitored by the tracker.
Since Disney released their hit movie “Finding Nemo”, almost every kid in the TV-watching world knows that a Clownfish is. Anemone Clownfish (Amphiprionocellaris), also called common clownfish are the stripy orange fishes that we commonly see living in coral reefs found in the tropical waters surrounding Australia and Asia.
What makes these fishes special is that they develop a interdependentrelationship with different kinds of sea anemones like Stichodactylamertensii, Stichodactyla gigantean,and Heteractismagnifica. Clownfishes stay in these anemones for shelter. The fishes also protect these anemones from harm. Clownfishes are covered in a special mucus that keeps them immune from the sting other fishes would feel when they come too close to an anemones.
Another strange thing about these fishes is that they all started off as male specimens. All the 28 anemonefishand clownfish species listed under the genus Amphiprion are protandrous hermaphrodites. All of them develop as males, complete with male reproductive organs, then change into females later on in their lives. Females are very aggressive and dominate, controlling males and preventing the development of other female specimens in the group. This explains why inbreeding pairs of Clowfishes, females are bigger.
Adult male and female Clownfishes live together along with their non-reproductivefishlets in a single anemone. However, when the female partner dies, the male would change to female. The larger of the juvenile fishes turn into male, and then he would dominate all the other juveniles. This whole system of sex changes is known as sequential hermaphroditism.
Sometimes, there are rare events that happen in the wild which get caught on tape. A school of Mobula rays were seen near the coast of the North Mexican Baja area. These rays are commonly seen in this area but what makes this school unusual is the number individual rays in it.
There were thousands of these rays that gathered into a giant school. Why they all decided to gather is still a mystery. However, while these rays were being filmed, they started to act strangely. Apparently, these animals don’t only look like they’re flying when swimming under the ocean, they actually flap their fins and propel out the water. The rays flew out of the water for a few feet and dive back.
Mobula sting rays (Mobulamunkiana), also known as devil rays, are known to stay near the eastern pacific and the Californian gulf area. They can grow to about 2 meters in length, from wing to wing. Even though these rays are seen in big schools, they are tagged as a near threatened because of their high catch rate and low reproductive levels. Large schools, which are usually migratory ones, usually swim near areas where fishermen fish. Fishermen information about the specie is very limited to the areas around the California Gulf and Mexico which makes it more difficult to track the number of rays that are actually catch. Thankfully, these rays are now being protected by wildlife groups to make sure that they keep reducing and that we see other Mobula sting rays in the future.
The sea is known to have a few strange and crazy looking animals living in the deep. It’s not really a big shock to find strange and unknown animals from the ocean since we’ve only explored a fraction of it. But it’s not only the ocean that has these strange species. We can also find peculiar ones in rivers and lakes.
The Pacu fish is a common fish species that can be found in major rivers in South America. These fishes are actually related to the more well-known piranhas that lurk in the Amazon’s rivers. Many people mistake these fishes as Piranhas since they look very alike, but what makes these fishes unique is their row of human-like teeth.
They swim rampantly in the Orinoco and Amazon River systems in the Amazonian lowlands, but some of have been reported to have swum as far off as Papua New Guinea. Another major difference between Pacus and Piranhas is their diet. Piranhas are carnivorous while Pacus are omnivorous. In fact, they prefer to munch on vegetation. Their flat, square teeth help them munch on seeds and nuts that fall into the river from the plants in the riverbanks.
Some time ago, these fishes became controversial, being called “testicle-biters”, since they apparently left some Papua New Guineamen castrated. But these reports were confirmed as falls and the natural behavior of these fishes don’t really fit into the incident so there’s absolutely nothing to worry about when you’re in the water with them.
If you’ve been watching shows that talk about how the human race started, like Cosmos or shows about genetics, you’d know that there are certain pieces and traits in our DNA that are similar to plants. Although animals and plants are two very different organisms, there are species that could bridge the gap between them. The “missing link” as what most would call it.
Recent genetic studies have discovered that sea anemones, like the ones that certain types of fish live in and eat, are part animal and part plant. The phylum Cnidaria, which contains around 10,000 kinds of animals found mostly in water and marine environments, kept a lot of their plant-like traits, and sea anemones fall under this classification.
Researchers discovered the sea anemone’s half animal and half plant trait though gene expression. They examined the two different processes of gene expression, transcription and translation, and found that an anemone’s transcription is similar to animals while their translation mimics the characteristics of plants.
So if we all have the same bits of pieces of DNA as plants, why don’t we have the same attributes as they do? Well, it’s either because we lost these traits or we changed them through time. It’s like how polar bears changed from brown bears to adapt to their environment.
Evolution is a very complex process that takes a very long time. In fact, it took a single cell organism billions of years to turn into something that could survive on land. As new discoveries about genetics are revealed, we can understand more about other living organism and how they relate to us, no matter how distant.
Have you ever seen an octopus with two ears? Although not functioning as the hearing sense, the Dumbo Octopus has ear-like fins virtually protruding from the top of their head-like bodies. Obviously, the extra-large and queer looking ears of the Disney elephant character, Dumbo have been likened to this unique octopus that poses the exact resemblance, hence the name.
This wonderful yet weird looking sea creature thrives in the bottom of the ocean and in depths up to 7,000 meters below sea level, approximately 23,000 feet the deepest so far for any known octopus to reach, identifying them as one of the rarest octopus from the Octopoda family.
Now, you might ask which ocean? They actually live in all 7 oceans of the world but still unique in the sense that they are not easily found and caught because of the depth of their habitat particularly the pelagic zone of the sea, one in which it is dubbed as the invisible water column that goes from the surface of the sea almost to the bottom. The Dumbo Octopus is a deep-sea creature, typically one that lives on or just close to the bottom of the ocean floor.
It can grow in length up to 20 centimeters long with 8 tentacles and have an existing 37 species known. They have the special ability to flush the most transparent layer of their skin and feeds on their prey (mostly crustaceans, worms, bivalves, pelagic cope-pods and other deep sea creatures that are smaller than them) by swallowing it whole, a characteristic that makes them different from any other kind of octopus.
They usually maneuver and move around in the deepest and most mystifying part of the ocean in three ways. They use their arms by pushing and making a vibration; they shoot water through their funnel or just flapping their ear-like fins can do the job. However, they can do these singly or separately it would not matter as they move and wave along the seabed with ease of movement.
Male and female Dumbo octopuses differ in their size and the patterns of feeding and sucking. For female reproduction, there is no typical breeding season, they just lay eggs constantly and consistently, continually making cute baby Dumbos in and out of season.
The life cycle of walruses and polar bears were focused in the 2007 released Arctic Tale, a documentary aimed at showcasing the challenges and difficulties of living in truly cold, sub temperate environments.
Primed as a juxtaposition over what polar bears and walruses have to go though just to exist, the documentary also touched up on how much of an impact mankind has in the existence of polar animals, in an effort to illustrate how much damage mankind’s wasteful ways affects all creatures in this world, big or small.
The documentary did well in featuring walruses, from their dietary habits to the dangers they face in the cold and harsh wild.
As mammals, walruses are often categorized as “flippered mammals”, with certain species weighing as much as 3,700 pounds. Known for their long lifespans, walruses are also known for their sociable attributes, and given the harsh state of their natural habitats, one can’t really blame them for moving around in groups.
The name “walrus” is ascribed to have old Norse origins, more popularly known as the old Germanic language. Though the entomology of the name isn’t as exact as one would want it, it is speculated that the name combines “whale” and “horse”.
Though never kept as “beasts of burden”, walruses have been hunted in the past, favored mostly for consumption purposes, with their tusks also utilized in the making of different trinkets and other collectibles.
Today, they are among the many protected species, with different environmental and government agencies standing as their vanguards. As a species, they continue to be one of the world’s most easily recognized, even though the distribution of their population is limited to cold tundras and cold climes.
