For #TimelapseThursday, check out this California Sea Cucumber (Apostichopus californicus) on the move!
This California Sea Cucumber lives in the MaST Center Aquarium's rocky touch pool, and can be seen cruising the pool, using its feeding tentacles to search for food. They are like nature's vacuum cleaner, hoovering up detritus, or organic materials.
This video shows a few intriguing things. First, while the sea cucumber is not pulled in by this Sand Rose Anemone's tentacles, it moves up on the window to avoid complete contact. It's feeding tentacles are constantly moving to cover as much ground as possible. Partially because of the timelapse and its relatively fast pace (for a sea cucumber, that is), it appears to be inching along, surging forward to move.
Finally, in the second half of the video, you can see the cucumber's back end pulsing. Did you know sea cucumbers "breathe" through their back end? Internally, they have a structure called a respiratory tree that is the location of oxygen exchange in their body. In order to bring in oxygenated water, the cucumber pulls clean water in by expanding its back end, and then pushes that water out by contracting. Sped up, it looks like its breathing!
