Sea Peaches
The sea peach is one kind of sea squirt. Sea squirts suck water in,
then squirt it out.
Sea peaches, cucumbers, grapes
You would never find a sea peach in a basket of fruit, or a sea cucumber
in a salad. Because a sea peach isn’t a fruit and a sea cucumber isn’t a
vegetable. They’re animals!
Sea peaches belong to the family of animals called sea squirts. Most
kinds of sea squirts are just round bodies with two openings like little
mouths. One mouth sucks water in. The other mouth squirts water out. The
sea squirt eats the tiny animals and bits of plants in the water it
sucks in.
To eat, a sea cucumber slides its arms through the sand or mud, puts
them into its mouth and sucks the mud off them!Sea Cucumber
Sea squirts stay fastened to the rocks or sand and never move. But sea
cucumbers crawl slowly over the sand and mud. They crawl on many feet
that look like little tubes.
A sea cucumber has a long, round body with what looks like a bunch of
leaves at one end. These are the sea cucumber’s “fingers.” It eats by
sucking food off them just as you might lick jelly from your fingers. As
the sea cucumber crawls, it rubs its “fingers” in the sand or mud. Bits
of food stick to them. Then the sea cucumber puts them in its mouth, one
at a time, and cleans them.
The sea peach and sea cucumber aren’t the only sea animals that look
like other things. The sea urchin looks like a round pincushion with
pins sticking out all over it. The sea grape is a little sea squirt that
looks like a green grape. And the sand dollar is an animal that looks
like a cooky!
Sea Urchin
A sea urchin’s round body is covered with spikes. Some sea urchins’
spikes are poisonous.
This looks like a cooky, but it’s a sea animal that moves about on many
feet that look like tiny tubes.
Sand Dollar
