But when a sponge decides to move, it actually starts breaking off these spicules as it contracts and expands its way towards its destination.
When a sponge is stationary, it secures its hold by tiny skeletal structures on its body called spicules. That makes the study of their movement all the more significant, because it pretty much creates a baseline of how carbon-based lifeforms thrived in the crazy environment before organic life appeared.Īlso read: Sea Sponge: The Strongest 'Uncrushable' Glass Skeleton Species Dynamics of sponge movement The study of them has often tied in with the study of how all life on Earth originated. What is fascinating is that this bare-bones structure belies the fact that sponges are arguably the oldest type animal ever in existence. This fairly basic form is aimed only towards a few functions: the sucking and filtering of seawater for food, enabling reproduction and (as it turns out) movement. In sharp contrast, sponges have a far simpler body structure and that structure represents the whole animal. It is this structure that makes them radically different from coral.Ĭoral are surprisingly more complex, with the formations being made up of identical, individual animals that create a colony. What defines a sea sponge?īut in order to understand how sea sponge movement happens, one must first know how a sponge is actually structured. However, recent underwater videos taken deep from the Arctic Ocean show that sponges are actually a bit more capable of movement than widely believed.Ī new report revealed that these all these unusual movements actually come at a horrific price. Often confused with corals, sea sponges are just as well known for their wide range of colour, strange shapes and seeming lack of mobility.
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