My animal is Ptychodactis Patula otherwise known as the Walking anemone. The Walking anemone is big in size; it can get up to 6 feet in length. It is pinkish white in color and has flaps instead of tentacles on the top. Some of its adaptations are that when there is not enough food in his area, it will pick up and walk to a new area. Some of its characteristics are the flaps on top and the tentacles on the bottom.

 

The walking anemone is a stinging anemone and it gets food by stinging passersby and transferring it to their mouth and eating it. They live in the North Pacific, in very deep, cold water. They do well in this habitat because it is deep and cold and easy to surprise fish with its stinging flaps. 

          

There is an unknown amount of the population because scientists have yet to learn about this species. Never the less the population of these creatures is increasing because its predators kill it at a lesser rate than which they breed.

 

The Walking anemone is carnivorous and they have 3 main ways of feeding. Filter feeding, raptorial capture, and passive capture. They mostly eat fish and small plankton. The things that they compete with for food is mostly other anemones but sometimes bigger fish will come and steal their food.

 

There are many Predators to the sea anemone. One of them would be the sea star. The sea star uses its legs to get inside the anemone and eat it with its beak. Another predator is large fishes. The larger fishes come by and eat it. But the anemone has one defense against its predators, it uses stinging cells called nematocysts to sting things that come by with a hair trigger activated sting. Also, some interesting facts about the anemone are that the clownfish is immune to its sting so they develop a partnership with each other.

 

Author: Lucas C

Published: 2/2013

 

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actiniaria

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptychodactiidae

http://entomology.biodiversity.ku.edu/node/3702

Book Source:

Marine Biology Research book 2010; 6: 570-572