Despite their harmless appearance and lack of tooth or claw, sea anemones actually get their nutrition from living things. These may include fish, hermit crabs, or even tiny zooplankton. 

When the fish swims close, or the crab crawls too close, the sea anemone shoots out a stinging tentacle and injects the prey. The paralyzing venom acts fast to disable the unfortunate victim, who is then pulled into the anemone's grasp and digested.

This species is a protogynous hermaphrodite, the female can change sex to become a male if no male is present.

Atlantic cod are hypothesized to communicate through the production of sound via drumming muscles. Sound production is correlated with mate selection during spawning season. It is hypothesized that the degree to which males are able to produce acoustic sound is positively associated with the overall fitness of the males, with those having larger drumming muscles producing greater sound waves and out-competing others. (Rowe and Hutchings, 2004)

These dolphins emit about ten different vocalizations as whistles, squawks, barks and buzzes that correspond to different behaviors. In this species whistles are emitted at frequencies between 7 and 16 kHz (Herzing, 1996, Azevedo et al. 2010).

The blue whale is the largest animal on the planet, weighing as much as 200 tons (approximately 33 elephants). The blue whale has a heart the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. Its stomach can hold one ton of krill and it needs to eat about four tons of krill each day. They are the loudest animals on Earth and are even louder than a jet engine. Their calls reach 188 decibels, while a jet reaches 140 decibels. Their low frequency whistle can be heard for hundreds of miles and is probably used to attract other blue whales.

Clownfish communicate by making popping and clicking noises.

Normally grows at depths from 3 to 368m. It lives on vertical walls, standing out perpendicularly, and can also grow in deep water where the water is clear and the current high on slope breaks.

After mating, females carry fertilized eggs on their pleopods for up to 9 months until the larvae are released.

Great white sharks can swim at speeds of 25 km/hr (16 mph) for short bursts and to depths of 1,200 m (3,900 ft).

The name 'dumbo' originates from their resemblance to the title character of Disney's 1941 film Dumbo, having a prominent ear-like fin which extends from the mantle above each eye.

Moray eels are carnivorous, and ambush predators. They live a rather sedentary life, waiting in hidden places for prey to pass near them.

Green turtles are considered the “ocean's lawnmowers” because they eat lots of vegetation and prevent seagrasses from getting too tall and harming other aquatic life.

Jellyfish are the oldest multicellular animals on the planet.Scientists have discovered jellyfish fossil snapshots in rocks believed to be more than 500 million years old. That makes them even older than dinosaurs!

Humpback whale groups, aside from mothers and calves, typically last for days or weeks at the most. Male humpback whales produce complex songs during the winter breeding season. These vocals range in frequency between 100 Hz to 4 Hz, with harmonics reaching up to 24 kHz or more, and can travel at least 10 km (6.2 mi).

Day-to-day orca behaviour generally consists of foraging, travelling, resting and socializing. Orcas frequently engage in surface behaviour such as breaching (jumping completely out of the water) and tail-slapping. These activities may have a variety of purposes, such as courtship, communication, dislodging parasites, or play.

The most conspicuous characteristic of the male narwhal is a single long tusk, which is in fact a canine tooth that projects from the left side of the upper jaw, through the lip and forms a left-handed helical spiral. The tusk grows throughout life, reaching a length of about 1.5 to 3.1 m (4.9 to 10.2 ft). It is hollow and weighs around 10 kg (22 lb).

The word nautilus is derived from the Greek word ναυτίλος nautílos 'sailor', it originally referred to a type of octopus of the genus Argonauta, also known as 'paper nautilus', which were thought to use two of their arms as sails.

Female seals are boasting a higher life expectancy than male seals. Female seals can get up to 30 years old in the wild, while male seals rarely reach the age of 25.

Most of the world's oxygen comes from seaweed! Researchers say that roughly 70% of the world's oxygen is produced by sea species including phytoplankton, kelp, and algal plankton.

They are protandric hermaphrodites, beginning life as males and later becoming females. Juveniles mature and breed as males during their first year, and later become and breed as females for the following years. The proportion of shrimp that change sex varies from year to year. High fishing pressures or naturally high mortality rates can induce males to change into females at a younger age, or even completely skip the male stage.

It can regenerate its tentacles - One of the first specimens of the giant squid was found off the coast of Canada, and it was clear that its tentacles were capable of regenerating. This was confirmed by the fact that the regenerated area looked different from the rest of the normal body.

Starfish don't actually have a brain, or even blood! In fact, they use filtered sea water to pump nutrients through their nervous system instead.

Swordfish is one of the few fish to lose their scales and teeth as they reach maturity.

Your sight is the best of all bony fishes. Their eyes, in some of the species, grow up to the size of tennis balls and with them they are able to see in murky or deep and dark waters. They can distinguish objects of 6 or 7cm to more than 30 meters.

Sea urchins have a hard outer shell made from calcium carbonate, called a test. But they don't have any bone structure. The test is made up of small plate segments that enclose the entire sea urchin.

Octopuses appear in mythology as sea monsters like the Kraken of Norway and the Akkorokamui of the Ainu, and probably the Gorgon of ancient Greece. A battle with an octopus appears in Victor Hugo's book Toilers of the Sea, inspiring other works such as Ian Fleming's Octopussy. Octopuses appear in Japanese erotic art, shunga. They are eaten and considered a delicacy by humans in many parts of the world, especially the Mediterranean and the Asian seas.

Olive ridley turtles exhibit two different nesting behaviours, the most prevalent solitary nesting, but also the behaviour they are best known for, the synchronized mass nesting, termed arribadas. Females return to the same beach from where they hatched, to lay their eggs. They lay their eggs in conical nests about 1.5 ft deep, which they laboriously dig with their hind flippers. In the Indian Ocean, the majority of olive ridleys nest in two or three large assemblies near Gahirmatha in Odisha. The coast of Odisha in India is one of the largest mass nesting sites for the olive ridley, along with the coasts of Mexico and Costa Rica.

The oyster has a curious way of defending itself. When a parasite invades its body, it releases a substance called mother-of-pearl, which crystallizes on the invader, preventing it from reproducing. After about three years this material turns into a pearl. Its shape depends on the shape of the invader and its color varies depending on the health of the oyster.

A shocking 69 different species are capable of producing an electric discharge. Basically, they can shock you! This defense can range anywhere from 8 to 220 volts of power.

Seahorses are also among only a few other fish species that mate for life.

Last December, scientists in Portugal got word that fishermen and boaters had spotted an enormous dead sunfish floating in the central North Atlantic. Researchers initially had doubts about the fish’s reported size, but when they finally reached the carcass near Faial Island in the Azores archipelago, they almost couldn’t believe their eyes.

Lobsters aren’t red. They turn red when cooked, but in nature they can be green or yellow or even bright blue. Lobsters can swim forward and backward. When they’re alarmed, they scoot away in reverse by rapidly curling and uncurling their tails. It is believed that lobsters can live as long as 100 years.

Puffer fish inflation is a defensive measure, and as such, there is no limit to the number of times an individual can inflate (and deflate). If the fish is inflated on the surface, it is likely to ingest air. The air can be difficult to expel and can cause the death of the fish, since the fish floats and can not leave the surface. However, if the fish is inflated under water, it only ingests water and has no problem deflating once the danger has passed.

Animal's Curiosities

Sandalled Anemone