![]() ![]() While sponges had previously exhibited this kind of behavior in laboratory environments, this is the first time that this specific method for moving was displayed in the wild. Want more health and science stories in your inbox? Subscribe to Salon's weekly newsletter The Vulgar Scientist. Unlike with honeybees, however, this process does not seem to kill the resilient creatures. They pay a grisly price for this, though: Like the honeybees that rip off part of their abdomen after stinging someone, the sponges seem to rip off their spicules in order to move. Instead the scientists believe that the sponges stick their spicules into the ground and then slowly pull their bodies forward. This makes it unlikely that gravity or ocean currents could explain the shed body parts. This theory is further supported by the fact that many of the sponges were on the uphill portions of their trails in areas that lacked strong flows of water. Given that the spicules were "connected directly to the underside or lower flanks of sponge individuals," and that there were long trails covering nearly 70 percent of the sea floor containing live sponges, the scientists hypothesize that they were probably left behind by those sponges as they slowly moved across the ocean floor. Notably, they observed that many of the individual sponges from the Geodia parva, Geodia hentscheli and Stelletta rhaphidophora species were living on a thick mat of spicules, a spike-like substance that helps a sponge support its body and ward off potential predators. ![]() In a recent study published by the journal "Cell Biology," scientists describe finding a group of demosponges - the most diverse class in the phylum known as Porifera - in the Arctic Sea. New research may change what we know about them. Far from being yellow, rectangular and hyperactive, sponges come in all shapes, sizes and colors they are believed to lack even SpongeBob's child-like intelligence and, far from being hyperactive, most of them are not known to move at all.Īt least, they weren't known to move at all. ![]() Viewers of "SpongeBob Squarepants" have been woefully misinformed about the reality of being a sponges. ![]()
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