Here is a donkey dung sea cucumber showing why it gets its name
I like finding animals with really weird names and one of the strangest must be the donkey dung sea cucumber.
Here are five interesting facts about them:
- These funny looking animals grow up to 50 cm long.
- The top of their body is dark brown and can be covered in warts, whilst the bottom is a much lighter pink, white or orange colour and has lots of little tube feet to move around on.
- Donkey dung sea cucumbers have an important role to play in the environment as they eat the sediment on the sea floor helping to clean and process the sand.
- At breeding time, the females expel eggs into the water and the males expel sperm. They both then use their tentacles to fan the eggs and sperm together for fertilisation.
- Donkey dung sea cucumbers are found in shallow water throughout the Caribbean. They are quite common throughout most of their range, although their numbers have been impacted by over-fishing in some areas. Some people consider them to be a delicacy, but I couldn’t think of anything worse to eat.
I hope that you found these facts interesting and learned something new.
Are there any other interesting facts that you would like to share about donkey dung sea cucumbers?
