Ocean animals: invertebrates

Invertebrates are animals that have no backbone. They can sometimes have soft bodies like an
octopus or hard bodies like crabs and clams.

Animals that live in and around the ocean are specially suited to live there. They can’t live anywhere
else because their bodies need the ocean in some ways. Polar bears for example, get most of their
food from the ocean, fish, seals and sea birds. If you put them in your garden, they would die of
hunger because they have wouldn’t have anywhere to get food. Fish as well can only live in the
water, they don’t have lungs to breathe air so they can’t live on land.

Ocean animals come in all kinds, shapes and sizes:

Big like whales

Small like shrimp

Soft like an octopus

Hard like a crab

Fast moving like the sail fish

Unmoving like corals

*From the book Earth’s Incredible Oceans pages 18-21 there are several groups of invertebrates.
Here are some interesting facts about some of them.

Sponges: on land, we use sponges for scrubbing and cleaning things like dishes and even our body.
In the sea, sponges have the same job too. These animals don’t move when they are older but when
they are still small, some can move slowly on the sea floor. They eat tiny pieces of dead animals and
plants that float in the ocean, and that helps to keep the ocean clean. Some sponges like the glass
sponge can form huge reefs, which are like ‘apartments’ in the ocean for fish and other animals to
live.

*The houses in SpongeBob’s city Bikini Bot look like glass sponges  so maybe SpongeBob lives in a
reef.

Another group of animals that can form reefs are corals. They are almost like sponges because they
can’t move and they don’t feel things when you touch them and they can join together and create
reefs for animals and plants to live.

Anemones: are slow moving predators. They use their stinging tentacles to eat anything that they
can catch including seaweed, fish, mussels, and crabs. They can even fight each other for space.
Some make more of themselves by breaking of parts of their bodies, and these pieces grow into new
anemones that look just like the old one. This is called cloning. Making copies of themselves.

Some animals like clownfish live in the anemone, the anemone doesn’t harm then and protects then
from other predators while the clownfish leaves it’s food leftovers for the anemone to eat.

*In the cartoon Finding Nemo, Nemo and his family live in an anemone. At the start of the film, they
hide from a barracuda attack in the anemone.

Marine worms: this is the name for all worms that live in the water. They come in all shapes and
sizes, with some dangerous ones and some harmless ones. Some like the Christmas tree and feather
duster worms keep most of their body in a tube and only the frilly top parts stuck out, sweeping
food into the worm’s mouth. Some worm are poisonous to touch and most fish and people stay
away from them.

Molluscs (also mollusks):

this group contains animals with soft, squishy bodies that sometimes keep their bodies safe by
having a shell. It also includes octopi, squid and cuttlefish.

Some differences to remember are :

Octopi have 8 tentacles, squid and cuttlefish have 10. Octopi have longer tentacles than heads,
cuttlefish have shorter tentacles and longer heads.

Other molluscs with shells can be :

1. with 1 shell and a soft body underneath like sea snails and limpets,
2. those with 2 shell halves that open and close like clams, oysters, mussels
3. Those with no shell at all, like sea slugs.

*People like to keep sea slugs as pets because they come in really cute colours and shapes like the
sea bunny and blue dragons.

Crustaceans: are sea animals with crusts or shells that look like armour. Animals like carbs, lobsters,
shrimps.

Their bodies are actually soft under the armour, but the armour makes them strong and safe from
predators.

Sea stars : have round bodies that have legs sticking out of them. They have no brain, blood or other
body parts besides a mouth and legs. They can have lots of legs like the sunflower sea star, they can
have thing bodies or thick strong bodies. They are mostly harmless to humans.

Sea cucumber: are in the same group as sea stars, they have thick sluggish bodies with spikes just
like the vegetables. Some people eat them.

Video recommendations:

Movies- finding Nemo

Show – SpongeBob SquarePants

https://youtu.be/LYPiGt7E07A?si=9gc7mcyVqv9qOFzg

https://youtu.be/ZiULxLLP32s?si=Wt9qtR-hRAkGc5PJ

https://youtu.be/vNhORnwcQcU?si=tQsv0HYXmibwRsRb

https://youtu.be/K_7ByiYbCYM?si=u_IkftxxStNTXHSH

https://youtu.be/oNjcBk4C4kQ?si=sYWAzaE2sqNgxmA4

https://youtu.be/hSymuNCvKrE?si=XnkcOwnaG-99nO6b

https://youtu.be/PJsGC4vCGpQ?si=o867dhFg3SVrI0i8

https://youtu.be/zcaP520ygt0?si=6YRTG4x31Mj_Pvh0