A typically sausage-shaped, soft-bodied marine invertebrate (echinoderm); mouth at one end surrounded by up to 30 tentacles, anus at the other end; skin leathery, containing minute bony structures (ossicles); found on or in the seabed, from shallow water to the deep sea. (Class: Holothuroidea.)
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A Sea Cucumber |
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Subclass Apodacea |
The sea cucumber is an echinoderm of the class Holothuroidea, with an elongated body and leathery skin, which is found on the sea floor worldwide.
Sea cucumbers extract oxygen from water in a pair of 'lungs' or respiratory 'trees' that branch off the cloaca just inside the anus, so that they 'breathe' by drawing water in through the anus and then expelling it.
Sea cucumbers in art
Sea cucumbers have inspired musical composition: in the first of his Embryons desséchés for piano solo, Erik Satie presents the "(Desiccated embryo) of a Holothurian" and inserts a description of the animal in the score:
The Holothurian crawls across boulders and rocky surfaces.Nonetheless it is the sea cucumber's closest relative (the echinoidea or sea urchin) that gets the most attention from scientists, both as an embryo and as a fossil.
Sea cucumbers have also inspired thousands of haiku in Japan, where they are called "namako" (ナマコ), written with characters that can be translated "sea mice". According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the "sea slug" is a holothurian first, but biologists insist on using "sea slug" only for the nudibranch, a marine-dwelling relative of land slugs.
Sea cucumber as food and medicine
Sea cucumber is considered a delicacy in Far East countries such as Malaysia, China, Japan, and Indonesia.
In Japanese cuisine, Konowata is made of sea cucumber entrails which are extracted, salted, and cured.
The trade in sea cucumber, between Macassans seafarers and the aborigines of Arnhem Land, to supply the markets of Southern China is the first recorded example of trade between the inhabitants of the Australian continent and their Asian neighbours.
Some varieties of sea cucumber (known as gamat in Malaysia) are said to have excellent healing properties.
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