As Rebecca Helm, a jellyfish biologist at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, told me, “It is just a really great butt.”īut the sea cucumber’s anus does not receive the recognition it deserves. It would not be inaccurate to describe a sea cucumber as an extraordinary anus that just so happens to have a body around it. It can even, on occasion, be a home for shimmering pearlfish, which wriggle inside the bum when it billows open to breathe. It is also a makeshift mouth that gobbles up bits of algae a faux lung, latticed with tubes that exchange gas with the surrounding water and a weapon that, in the presence of danger, can launch a sticky, stringy web of internal organs to entangle predators. ![]() ![]() The sea cucumber's posterior is so much more than an exit hole for digestive waste. ![]() Gently turn that blobby body around, and gaze deep into its marvelous, multifunctional anus. To peer into the soul of a sea cucumber, don’t look to its face it doesn’t have one.
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