A telecasting captured and partake on YouTube bySouthernIslanderDiveshows the incredible – and somewhat disturbing – moment an underwater ocean creature drum out a retentive , spiraled poop from a bad , black hollow .
Posted back in mid - July , the channel shares subaqueous shot of maritime liveliness around Japan ’s weewee . Molly Zaleski , a marine biologist based in Southeast Alaska , told IFLScience the slug - esque creature is a ocean cucumber and it ’s really doing something incredibly normal .
“ It ’s pooping , ” said Zaleski , who is not affiliated with the YouTube channel . “ [ Sea cucumbers ] fundamentally clean the George Sand by eating it and support the detritus / interstitial plant life and animal – a fancy way of read the plant and animate being that live in the sand – and poop out the indigestible sand . ”
Sea cucumbers are related to ocean urchin and starfish in the echinoderm kinfolk , according to theNational Wildlife Federation . The Cucumis sativus - shaped scavengers pick up pocket-size bits of algae , aquatic invertebrates , and other animals ’ waste with tube feet surrounding their mouths . These flyspeck particles are broken down into smaller piece of music , which are reused by bacterium and other animals in the sea ecosystem .
" The cognitive process of [ sea cucumbers ] clean the sand like this is bid bioturbation , " order Zaleski . " They are capable to switch the home ground in a positivist mode and can aid in the biodiversity of their ecosystem simply by retread the sediment around them . "
Invertebrate zoologist Christopher Mah , in an interview withLive Science , who first cover the video , name the ocean cucumber asThelenota anax , commonly find throughout the ocean waters of the Indo - West Pacific , from easterly Africa and Australia to the Philippines and Cook Islands .
Found in nearly every consistence of water around the macrocosm , most ocean cucumber populations are stable . However , theIUCN Red List of Threatened Speciesconsiders the giant sea cucumber – which can reach lengths of more than6 feet(1.8 meters ) – is a rare coinage set up at a variety show of home ground at depths between 10 and 30 meters ( 32 and 100 feet ) . In the last two decades , sea cucumber stemma have been so deplete that sure coinage now face extinction . appetence in Asiafor the spongy echinoderm have expand fisheries into more than70 countrieswhose ocean ecology could faceconsequencesas a upshot .
[ H / T : Live Science ]
