Sea cucumber

A sea cucumber is an invertebrate animal, with the soft and oblong body, radial symmetry, with the rough skin, having a circle of Tentacule S around the mouth. It is also called cucumber of sea or digs sea but also marine vier in Marseilles. Its Portuguese name, bicho C mar , would be at the origin of the name of the spoken language to the Vanuatu: the Bichelamar .

It belongs to the junction of the echinodermatous and the class of the holothurides. It can reach 25 cm length. He lives at the bottom of the hot seas and is fished in Indonesia and China. This animal with the characteristic to release, for the majority, of toxins in the event of intense stress of attack or danger. These toxins are dangerous, even mortals, for the majority of fish and other marine animals.

Anatomy

They have the shape of a large cylinder length of which are laid out the 5 lines of feet ambulacraires. With the one of the ends the mouth, surrounded by a crown of tentacles opens. The teguments are soft, one finds there only tiny spicules of Calcite of various forms.

Behavior

When they are worried, certain sea cucumbers can emit long very sticky filaments and even reject part of their internal bodies; projected by the cloacal opening, this mass gotten mixed up and sticking and the enemy immobilizes recovers - Poisson or Crabe; the sea cucumber continues its respiratory movements, draining sea water directly in the general cavity of the body, until new bodies are regenerated.

Ecology

The sea cucumbers live littoral zone until more the great depths of the oceans, they are hidden in muddy sand, crawl on the bottom among the algae, or are placed in anfractuosities of the rocks.

They can form very dense populations, particularly in the depths; in a underwater Pit very deep, they constitute half of the alive forms with 4 000 meters and 90% with 8 000 meters. The sea cucumbers know three sources of food: Plankton, Refuse and material organics of the basic sediments. Only one specimen can swallow more than 45 kg of sediments per annum. Like such, the cucumbers of sea are responsible for material changes in the population of sea-beds.

Classification

According to ITIS:

subclass Apodacea Brandt, 1835

order Apodida Brandt, 1835
order Molpadiida Haeckel, 1896

subclass Aspidochirotacea Brandt, 1835

order Aspidochirotida Grube, 1840
order Elasipodida

subclass Dendrochirotacea Grube, 1840

order Dactylochirotida Pawson and Fell, 1965
order Dendrochirotida Grube, 1840

Others

In much of places of Indonesia and Peaceful , one collects cucumbers of sea to take their bodies; they eat them believed or use them to make soup. Various species of sea cucumbers, known under the name of trepang in Malayan, emptied, pulps, dried, fume are consumed in China and there are very appreciated. Certain pharmaceutical companies produce derivative products starting from the trepang . These products are appeared as oils, of creams and cosmetics. Some of them are intended to be introduced. The effectiveness of the cucumber extracts of sea was the object of studies.

See too

" Holothuries" is, by derision, the name given by the type-setter Erik Satie to the one of its compositions for piano.

Echinodermata (phylogenetic classification)

External bonds

Simple: Sea cucumber

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