Interesting or creepy???

-

 

Star"fish" and Sea"horse"



Starfish or Sea-stars:

Starfish on a beach
Travel photo created by awesomecontent - www.freepik.com


These organisms are not actually fishes as they don't have fins, scales or gills like normals fishes have. Researchers call them sea-stars to be more specific with the meaning of its name. Some important characters of sea-stars are interesting but few of them could be stomach-turning. There are more than 20,000 species of starfish and all in a variety of beautiful different colours.


This animal is mostly known for its five-feet shape, but some of them have upto 35 to 40 arms. These are Deep sea creatures without any circulatory system or a proper skeletal system like humans. They don't come under the category of fishes, rather, are placed under invertebrates, in phylum Echinodermata. Mostly exhibit radial symmetry. Means if cut a starfish from any point in the centre it will always give equal halves. They don't have blood as a part of fluid inside the body, instead, they carry seawater which is absorbed by their skin for feeding purpose. Animals of this category have a stomach to digest food, but the creepy part is some of them can take the whole stomach out for ingestion and take it in again.


Many of you might have heard that if you cut an arm of a starfish it grows again, this is because it carries some factors with the property of regeneration. Some of them are capable of regenerating an entire starfish from a single arm. Even the eyes of a starfish are present at the tip of its arms so cutting the arm will not lead to sight problems. Though they don't have a proper brain like humans you can't call them "fools" as they can sense heat, cold, light etc. They can detect the prey and for their protection have spiny armour (most species) all over the surface.


7-Armed starfish
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Luidia_maculata,_Ras_Sedr,_Egypt.jpg
لا روسا / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)


They don't have fins for swimming or moving ahead but have tube feets which are the speciality of this species. With these sea-stars can move really fast, which is a beautiful sight at the oceans or beaches. 



Spiny surface and tube feet visible at edges
Water photo created by halayalex - www.freepik.com

Seahorses:

This animal correctly follow the phrase told by Shakespeare "What's in a name". Though named as sea horse, these animals are not actual horses of the sea. Horses on land are the fast runners, on the other hand seahorses are the slow swimmers with average speed of 5 feet per hour. Only reason for calling them horse is maybe because their neck looks like that of a horse. They are fishes with bony outer surface, which gives them an advantage with less predators. 

Two seahorses together
Image by Sascha Fritz from Pixabay


One interesting fact about seahorses is that both their eyes work independently. For example, when we look at something, both our eyes will look at the same thing at one time. But for seahorses if they look for food with one eye then they can look for predators with other eye at the same time.

Image by Jörg Prohaszka from Pixabay


Like most other sea animals, seahorses don't have a stomach, so whatever they eat pass out directly and the process is very fast so they eat frequently.

Now, a table turning event is carried out by a seahorse and that is, males give birth to babies. Only three animals show this, against the natural reproductive behaviour and they are, The male pipefish, Sea dragon and Seahorse, all being aquatic. 

Animals always have some extra quality to be safe from their predators. Seahorses have a pouch with three colours in it and it can change its colour according to the surroundings (camouflage), food, mating habit or mood swings.

Seahorses are monogamous like humans and reproduce with same partner throughout the life. But one thing is different from humans is that for them females are the head and decides the mating time. Females have a 100 sq. meters territory and males have only 0.5 sq. meters. 

Smallest seahorse being the Pygmy seahorse and the largest big-belly seahorse.

Related links

  1. https://comparativeanatomybiology.weebly.com/sea-star-anatomy.html


If you find any copy-write content in this blog and if your are the owner or know the owner, then please contact me. I would be happy to give you the credits. If you don’t want your content to be on this blog, I will remove it.








Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Menstruation (Culture, Hygiene, Taboo)

-
Image
India is filled with menstruation related taboo and lack of education among women, trans, queer and non-binary people who menstruate. Educating them and removing the unnecessary taboo is very important now. It's high time and our generation can indeed make a change. 1.8 billion people menstruate every month across the world. I want to use the phrase "people who menstruate" instead of using the term "women," which is very gender-specific. Lots of things are there to discuss under this big umbrella called MENSTRUATION.  Photo created by freepik - www.freepik.com   Menstrual Hygiene:    Hygiene means keeping good health with cleanliness around and good standards to prevent diseases. We all know what hygiene is, but only a few know about Menstrual hygiene . Using correct blood absorbent and sterile material is an essential factor. Cleaning the pubic area and cleaning the undergarments properly is also equally important. Almost all the girls/trans/queer face this pro...
Read more

Nature and White Biotechnology

-
Image
Nature, Nature, Nature...! People talk a lot about nature and the environment, but it's sad; that only talking won't help. We want big houses to live in but as consequence trees are being cut down. Mother nature is giving her gifts to humans from day one. Cotton, wool, silk....for your fabrics, your fashionable clothes and wood for building house, furniture. Also, plants are destroyed, especially flowers are squeezed to dye you pretty looking stylish clothes, bedsheets, decorative items.... and the list goes on. Chemists came into picture and natural dye was replaced with artificial dye and soon plastic or  polymers replaced wood. Things were still not going well. Plastic was not biodegradable and caused pollution. It started accumulating in oceans on land and as a side effect fishes (also other land animals) were suffering. All because of careless humans. Artificial dye has a lot of chemicals as lot of acids and base goes into its manufacturing process. So, as a solution to ...
Read more