Tube dwelling anemones, wonderful creatures of the sea

Deze blogpost in het Nederlands (link)

Today, I would like to show you one of my recent nature photographs. Let’s make Wednesday the #WonderfulNature day 😉

Photo of two tube dwelling anemones, a blue and a pink one, photographed in the Aquarium of Artis Amsterdam zoo, the Netherlands (August 31, 2014)

“Tube-dwelling anemones or cerianthids look very similar to sea anemones, but belong to an entirely different subclass of anthozoans. They are solitary, living buried in soft sediments. Tube anemones live and can withdraw into tubes, which are made of a fibrous material, which is made from secreted mucus and threads of nematocyst-like organelles, known as ptychocysts.

Cerianthids have a crown of tentacles that consists of two whorls of distinctly different sized tentacles. The outer whorl consists of large tentacles that extend outwards. These tentacles taper to points and are mostly used in food capture and defence. The smaller inner tentacles are held more erect than the larger lateral tentacles and are used for food manipulation and ingestion.” Source: Wikipedia