The basket star has a five-pointed body that's up to a few inches across. An arm extends from each point. Unlike your average sea star, though, a basket star's arms quickly branch out. Each arm may have two main branches, with many smaller ones extending from each of the bigger ones. And the branches have their own sub-branches, with small barbs on the ends. In all, an arm may be up to a couple of feet long. The basket star feeds by anchoring itself to the sea floor and extending its arms into the current — forming a wide basket. Small shellfish, jellyfish, and other critters that float with the current flow right into the basket. The barbs trap the unfortunate prey, encase it in strands of mucus, then pull it down to the basket star's mouth.
The Ross seal shares a recent common ancestor with three other extant Antarctic seals, which are together known as the lobodontine seals. The other species are the crabeater seal (Lobodon carcinophaga), leopard seal (Hydrurga leptonyx) and Weddell seal (Leptonychotes weddelli). These species, collectively belonging to the seal tribe Lobodontini, share teeth adaptations, including lobes and cusps useful for straining smaller prey items out of the water column.
Polar bears tend to eat animals with lots of fatty blubber which is why they prefer marine mammals. Generally, they do not eat arctic foxes and often (unwillingly) share food with them. This is because the polar bear will usually leave the meaty part of a carcass behind. Arctic foxes will follow polar bears and scavenge on these remains. Whilst polar bears do not normally eat arctic foxes when food is abundant, they must be cautious when food is scarce because the polar bear might get hungry and hunt it instead.
Sea spiders don't have the ability to spin webs; instead, they use their tubelike proboscis (nose-like structure) to suck the life out of their prey. The tip of the proboscis has three lips; some even have teeth. Once inside the proboscis, the juices are mixed with enzymes for digestion. Sea spiders eat sponges, jellyfish, sea anemones, and other prey. One group of scientists even observed a sea spider clipping off a sea anemone's tentacles in order to suck out the juices later.
"Pearl" from the Pixar classic, Finding Nemo, is part of the Umbrella Octopus family. She is a Flapjack Octopus (Opisthoteuthis Californiana) who is found nowhere near the shallow waters of the barrier reef in Australia. Real-life Pearl would spend her time in the deep sea off of the coast of Japan or the western USA.
Orcas are often called killer whales — they certainly have the size to be listed among those massive creatures. However, orcas are not actually whales; they are dolphins (and the largest species of dolphin, at that). Taxonomically, they fall into the Delphinidae family, which are oceanic dolphins. It is theorized that the misnomer was originated by sailors who saw orcas' ferocious hunting of large marine animals and dubbed them "whale killers." Then, the term somehow got flipped around over time.
Big Major Cay Island is an island in the Bahamas which, in itself, does not make it all that special. In recent years, it's become known as "Pig Beach" or "Pig Island" for the simple fact that, well, it lives up to its name. On this island, pigs have appeared and seem to be quite happy living there; they're undisturbed and fending for themselves. The nickname for this island has become more well-known than its actual name at this point. This island is completely uninhabited by humans. These pigs haven't been raised or helped by humans, or escaped from their owners. They've always been entirely wild because this island is uninhabited by humans themselves. There are no homes on this small island, nothing; just previously undisturbed luxurious beaches and a forest, which is where the pigs originally seemed to come from.
Despite their name, brain corals are completely brainless and are not as intelligent as their name implies. Their spherical shape and grooved surface of a sea brain resembles an underwater brain, but the animals within the stony exterior are simple invertebrates related to jellyfish and sea anemones. Brain corals belong to a group of hard corals, or stony corals. Their structure is made of calcium carbonate, or limestone, which hardens into a rock-like exoskeleton. These skeletal structures become cemented together to form a sphere that gives brain corals their shape. Brain corals grow very slowly as each generation adds to the limestone skeleton. Some brain corals can live up to 900 years. Because of their massive, sturdy structure, they form the foundation of coral reefs and can grow to 6 feet tall.
The pig-nosed turtle is the sole surviving member of its entire family, Carettochelyidae, and sits alone on a branch of the tree of life reaching back around 140 million years. That is more than 70 million years before the extinction of the dinosaurs! This unique freshwater turtle has many unusual morphological, ecological and behavioural characteristics. Unlike other freshwater turtles, the pig-nosed turtle has flippers, resembling those of a sea turtle more than a freshwater species. This strange turtle has a leathery shell, rather than a shell formed of hard, distinct scutes and has a long, fleshy snout with large nostrils, much like that of a pig, hence the common name of the species.
Like other anemones, the Venus flytrap anemone resembles a flower, but is actually an animal. It consists of a stem-like body topped with a wide mouth-like disk surrounded by tentacles. These anemones vary in color—they often have white or pastel bodies with brightly colored disks and tentacles in shades of pink and orange. They're unusual among anemones because they stand upright and yet are not fully anchored to the substrate. This allows the animals to be swept away rather than buried when the sediment shifts with underwater currents. If threatened, the Venus flytrap anemone can close its disk with the tentacles inside and retract itself so only the stem remains