True Facts: Sea Cucumbers

this episode is sponsored by brilliant learn to think This Charming little fellow who is in echinoderm in the Clan's Hollow thorough idea holla thyroids are often referred to as sea cucumbers because some of them look like cucumbers of the pickling variety but in case you're wondering it's not that simple you can't just name things what they look like sea turd right that wouldn't be appropriate there's rules to it fat dump fish ocean loaf those wouldn't fly either they're not named things like demon feces or zombie pug with a weird baby face on it it's cucumbers all right have some respect anyway let's back up a bit and start right before the beginning it is spawning season and male sea cucumbers Begin by arching their bodies upwards into what is known as the Cobra position slowly at first the males release sperm into the water from a small hole called a gonapore Jerry I told you I don't want that shrimp in the shot see what did I tell you it's wearing the ejaculate like it's a housecoat it's eating it well that's even worse Jerry look at that one he's shoveling it right in isn't he I mean I guess from the shrimp's perspective this is pretty exciting it's like being on a splash pad where nacho cheese comes out the holes what Jerry why not sperm why didn't I say a splash pad where sperm comes out the holes well Jerry that wouldn't be an analogy that's basically what's happening they probably have that in Vegas sorry we're getting distracted Downstream from the males the females catch the drift literally you know Marjorie there's a little something on your cheek let me get it for you oop Marjorie I think it's time we release our eggs and that's what they do they release their eggs and then there's sperm and eggs floating around together it's like an orgy for introverts no need to interact anyway when a sperm and egg cell meat they fuse and then they divide and grow and eventually become a sea cucumber larva now in Latin they know how to give a name in this first stage they're called auricularia or little ear it swims around and eats until it becomes a doliolaria or Little Barrel this is when it navigates to the sea floor and goes through a metamorphosis on one side of its body this little Ring Thing develops with tubes coming off of it this will become a water pump system that will power their tentacles and their feet after some rearranging it emerges as a pentacula or five tentacled thing and that's the thing about studying Latin you'd think it'd be all about toga parties and orgies but then you find out the only people that use it are the science hippies I mean sure they throw a good orgy but when it's done good luck finding your Birkenstocks in that pile anyway most sea cucumber babies go through this whole process out there in the water alone however synapular hydroformous does it different it Broods its babies inside of its Bunny and when they're ready they pop right out of its butt these juveniles are tiny but they have all the sea cucumbery bits they need to start cucumbering their body plan is arranged in a circle like their cousins the sea stars here take a sea star put a pin in it and blow it up like a ball now you basically have a sea urchin flip that on its side and stretch it out into a tube and you have the basic body plan of a sea cucumber kind of easy to see in this one but in other species it can be more difficult I mean come on that looks like a sneeze that tried to put itself back together now around 470 million years ago sea cucumbers went full motion lost most of their hard bits they still technically have an internal skeleton but it's a bit of a stretch if you ask me they're little pieces that are sort of spread out through the body looks a little like alphabet soup for sadists they might not look like much but they aren't attachment points for collagen fibers and give structure to the body what's more is sometimes these little anchor shapes stick out and provide grippage as they move about their mouth holes and their tentacles are supported by another hard bit called the calcareous ring to move the sea cucumber uses three systems that often work together first a series of tubes and canals are powered by water pressure second muscle fibers run up the length of the body and third they have a special kind of collagen under nervous control that can change between stiff and floppy Jerry that's a rock oh that's better in this shot you can see that fat stiffy really filling up the palm of that man's hand but within minutes it can become completely limp imagine that I mean you could play with one of those for hours with all this specialized equipment sea cucumbers have figured out a number of ways to move about deep sea skoda planes mainly use their water powered tubed feet which are equipped with a special adhesive that can attach to the ocean floor and then detach not the fastest animal but it's really slow isn't it however if you speed things up a bit it certainly seems like they know where they're going and they're wondering why everything's moving so freaking fast many species combine the use of their Grammy Grammy tubed feet with a wave-like compression and expansion of their bodies some species don't even have tubed feet but they can crawl around in a way that looks just like how vomiting feels now some of them have really gotten the hang of it and can put on a bit of speed look at this one he looks like a happy puppy of course the real show-offs put it all together and figured out how to swim look at that takes right off and then slowly undulates like it's trying to suck itself many species have adaptations that help them swim or float in the current we'll get to those in a moment right after a brief message about our sponsor brilliant is a remarkable way to learn they've figured out how to teach Science and Mathematics in a way that's bite-sized and interactive and that takes some of the pressure out of approaching new Concepts it's fun but challenging fun brilliant has thousands of lessons from the basics all the way through to the advanced stuff for example info to algebra is a perfect way to get more comfortable with equations and graphs and how they work together to show you patterns in the world around you algebra can be intimidating but if you work on it bit by bit you start to build up an instinct now one of my favorite topics is how neurons work sea cucumbers don't have brains like we do but by learning about neural networks you can see how simple rules can give rise to very complex and coordinated behaviors I don't know about you but I want to learn every single thing in the world and honestly I'm a bit behind schedule but I want to go at my own pace mom and that's why I recommend brilliant to get started for free visit brilliant.org zayfrank or click on the link in the description the first 200 of you will get 20 off brilliant's annual premium subscription I'm a fan and happy to have brilliant as a sponsor where were we all right many sea cucumbers have special adaptations for swimming or floating some have skirts that look like an umbrella doing the breaststroke there's this one apparently that thing in the back is some sort of a sail whole thing looks like an amputated clown foot but he thinks inside those clown shoes some use their oral tentacles to sort of pull themselves Along Ice Cream Scoops oh crap you know what that is every once in a while Satan releases a murder chicken let me tell you if that thing gets up to the surface we're all fit not our chicken most species only swim for a short period of time to avoid a predator or maybe have a change in scenery however sea cucumbers in the genus palaga thoria decided to go full jellyfish they spend their entire lives floating in the water they are suspension feeders and use their tentacles to do the Aquatic equivalent of licking air it's not that easy to see with this one but there are other suspension feeding sea cucumbers that live on the sea floor Rebecca don't be shy now oh there you are Rebecca is in the genus neo-thianidium and she has fabulous tentacles sea cucumber tentacles are actually highly modified tubed feet and they are powered by water pressure here is Rebecca's friend Duke who is in the genus pseudocalicyrus and is also a suspension feeder look at his little feet holding on those Shaggy little split ends at the tips of the tentacles are covered in a mucus-like substance waving them in the water and traps algae and Tiny invertebrates along with some other crap like actual crap you see there are no toilets in the ocean except one the ocean so there's that and then when a fish dies or a whale there's no place to flush it so at the bottom of the ocean there is a gentle rain made of and Rotting Flesh and that's what sea cucumbers eat I mean that's a niche right there it's a niche you get when you show up late to when they were handing out niches so what do we have left here there's live inside volcano and eat all the oceans but credit to them the sea cucumbers really took that job and ran with it the ones that crawl around basically just eat the floor it's like if your carpet was covered in Cheetos crumbs and you walked around in your hands and then licked your fingers I mean they're like a Roomba if roombas took giant shots on your carpet because that's what happens if it goes in one side it's got to come out the other and listen if you see through it's embarrassing having a full load and it turns out they're doing something pretty important the science hippies call it nutrient cycling essentially processing the waste and looping it out in the form that other things can eat it's not what I'd want to be known for but it's not nothing and it's like my mother used to say you find me a grain of sand that hasn't been through the ass of a sea cucumber good luck with that and while we're on the subject let me tell you this is no ordinary run-of-the-mill anus it is a cloaca sort of an ass plus a hole for every season oh you know what it's doing right there it's breathing out its butt because that backhoe also connects to something called a respiratory tree here let's have a look inside oh man that looks like a plate at a zombie Buffet well the respiratory tree is right around here it's an alias to her lungs water is drawn into the respiratory tree and that's how sea cucumbers get oxygen some species also seem to get nutrients through their tree and sometimes that cloaker can look like it's staring right at you right into your soul and let me tell you if they decide to Exhale quickly and you're on the business end you'll feel it it's how they lift off when they want to swim and watch this drop some balance right out the same hole now the problem with packing an awesome hole like that is that there's going to be folks snooping around trying to get a look-see I know you know about the pearlfish and everyone knows about the Pearl fish Shameless self-promoter but no one's talking about the crab I'd much rather have the fish than the crab it's more of a contoured fit I mean that looks like it did Tickle and then there's an even tinier crab that lives in their respiratory tree no wonder that some sea cucumbers have evolved anal teeth try bringing those to a dentist gotta pay extra but you can't really blame the fish and the crabs and the nudibranchs apparently the body of a sea cucumber is a nice place to live nope no Jerry we've seen quite enough of that filthy shrimp oh look that snail's trying to have a ride on that sea cucumber what's that oh it's trying to eat it well that's terrifying the Flesh of sea cucumbers has toxins in it which make it unappetizing for many predators but apparently the tongue snail is not one of them even if you taste like crap it's dangerous down there you want to see how dangerous look at this these science hippies made clay models of a sea cucumber apparently that's what you do with a PhD and look at them don't have to do much to model a sea cucumber do you anyway they put these turdlets in the water and look at all those bite marks it's not safe they need some good defense some of them went straight for the obvious shoot streamers out your ass sea cucumbers in the Family halothera Day have these tubules inside their body attached to their breathing apparatus when they're stressed they clench real hard and burst the inside lining of their butt or cloaca when they do that their body fluid sort of rushes out the backside and the tubes go with it then they force water from their butt lungs into the tubes which causes them to elongate now this has a couple of benefits here I know what you're thinking what's that Old Hippie doing in the ocean well the joke's on you that's a sea cucumber in Disguise aside from the camouflage these tubules get very sticky on contact and that's not easy to do you try making a glue that's sticky underwater anyways it makes a big mess and can tangle up a predator like this crab that doesn't know what personal boundaries are and on top of that the tubules are toxic and the sea cucumber can crawl away from all this because the tubes detach when they grow back too and you know that tongue snail that was eating the sea cucumber well now it's a tongue snail covered in Silly String eating a sea cucumber take that you astropod but sea cucumbers have another sleeve up their butt when threatened sea cucumbers can go through a process called evisceration that special collagen they have goes soft in certain places on their insides this allows sea cucumbers to rupture and expel their intestines and other organs out the back or the front depending on the species aside from being disgusting it gives the Predators something to chew on and you know what sometimes sea cucumbers eviscerate just for the hell of it to clean out the pipes because they can grow all that back in a couple months must feel good to have fresh insides like changing your underwear and check this out the digestive tract grows back from each end and meets in the middle I'm sure they're happy to see each other hello mouth hole hello and that is how the sea cucumber do Helen Helen I know you're in there Helen what are you doing inside of Frederick's anus well did you ask Frederick if you wanted someone in his anus well you should do maybe Frederick gets a turn in your anus next see how you like it your little fish eyes would pop right out you've been eating his gonads haven't you Helen but don't apologize to me apologize to Frederick and his anus [Music] thank you

Channel: Ze Frank

Views: 2,458,117

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Id: QAm1HHnPj8Q

Length: 13min 36sec (816 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 07 2022