Dive Into Your Imagination

Nudibranch means naked gills in Latin and Greek! Stomach footed animals, they walk around on their stomach all day looking for food! They have tentacles on top of their head and can smell, touch and taste using these. Rinophores are on top of their heads that they detect odors with.

You would not think this colorful animal would be a predator, but they are carnivores and eat sponges, hydroids, tunicates and other animals under the sea. Some nudibranchs are even cannibals and will eat other sea slugs! It is believed that they eat hydroids and take the stinging cells, nematocysts, into their bodies signaling other animals, if you eat me, I am poisonous. They have special skin cells too that if irritated, they will slime and irritate other animals that might try and eat them.

Nudibranchs are hermaphrodites and having reproductive organs for both genders. You often find them together on the reef. Many lay eggs that look like flower rings or weblike nets. Every diver likes to find nudibranchs because of their amazing colors and designs!

Encourage your children to create arts & crafts relating to aquatic creatures. Invent a new species of fish, whale, or nudibranch, give it a name, and explain how it lives under the water. Draw a model, and then create a 3-D sculpture. What would it be made of? Tinfoil? Felt? Paper mache? How does the animal breathe? Kids have amazing imaginations allow them to create the unimaginable and make it come to life!

 

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