Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s previous World of Wonder columns for The Butter can be found here.
This translucent little cutie can fit in the palm of your hand and eats “marine snow”—that tasty bit o’ sea life dander and detritus that sloooowly trickles down to the very bottom of the ocean floor. Scotoplanes globosa is a type of sea cucumber that sports five to seven pairs of tube feet, which can be inflated/deflated to scoot-march around on the ocean floor.
Sea pigs live in the coldest and deepest parts of the ocean—about four miles below the water’s surface. In fact, they’ve been found in every single one of the planet’s oceans, but no one knows how they reproduce or how long they live on average because their bodies are so darn fragile—one false move and pop! goes the sea pig’s skin.
Here is what they look like in motion (but keep in mind this already slow video is sped up ten times already!):
Sea pigs are usually found numbering in the hundreds (yes, hundreds!) where a particularly juicy patch of marine snow has gathered, or even better—when a shark carcass makes it all the way down to the ocean floor. What makes the sea pigs particularly hypnotizing when they feast is that they all face the same direction, munching to their content on the carcass, facing into the ocean current, which is thought to help them sense out and sniff where their next food party should take place.
Speaking of food parties, O Wonder Readers, I want to hear from you: What animal’s eating habits have YOU found particularly mesmerizing? Or so horrifying you couldn’t possibly look away, so you stared and stared with a scrunched-up face instead? And p.s.: don’t be sassy and name a human for this! No, you cannot include your yucky ex-roommate, har dee har har. But bonus points and sequins if you can include a video to show said feeding frenzy!
Tags: aimee nezhukumatathil, sea pigs, the butter, world of wonder
Is it possible to get twelve and keep them in a tank at work…?
Starfish. Or sea stars, or whatever we’re calling them now. I feel firmly that an animal’s stomach should remain inside of it for the duration of its life, but you do you, buddy.
Sea piiiiiigs! Top candidate on name alone. Look at them just quietly floating about, getting on with life.
I was rewatching Life of Birds from the BBC last night and I gotta say, the lammergeier is pretty high on my list of interesting eaters. They apparently eat mostly bone marrow- they will much on whole chunks of bone, and have VERY acidic stomach acid that will dissolve the exterior part quickly to get to the tasty marrow. And one of their main M.O.s is to fly up with big chunks of bone and drop them on rocks so they splinter into smaller eatable chunks. I gotta admit, that’s pretty metal.
ETA: Look at this bird. SO METAL
They are FOUR FEET TALL, and they paint their white feathers red and orange with BLOOD and DIRT as a status symbol. There is nothing on earth more metal than these birds!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What neat little creatures! I’d never heard of sea pigs before, and now I want one.
I love this series. Alas, I have no video, but I saw an anglerfish being fed the last time I was at an aquarium, and it was one of the greatest moments of my life.
Cute little beggars! Although as soon as I think of horrifying animal eating habits, my mind immediately goes to this mentally scarring hyena video (you’ve been warned) – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaH4za2yoFs.
Somewhere, ze frank just smiled and he doesn’t know why.
Somewhere, ze frank just smiled and he doesn't know why.
I am enormously pleased to know that I live in a world that has sea pigs in it.
I am enormously pleased to know that I live in a world that has sea pigs in it.
The star-nosed mole! Faster than these guys, and almost as Cthuvian
I am so glad you asked, because everyone should watch a banana slug eat a leaf sometime. https://youtu.be/KB3scGais-4?list=FL-RBY5fqpcRJlE…