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:

1. These funny looking animals grow up to 50 cm long.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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?