What Animal Might Be Named for a Vegetable?
If you touch the sea cucumber, its elastic and leathery body looks like a vegetable, yet it’s really a mass of muscles wriggling through the sea. This simple animal can eat 100 pounds of tiny sea plants and animals each year! The cucumber sweeps up little organisms with the sticky, finger-like feelers around its mouth then licks its feelers like a baby eating. When attacked, they squirt out part of their insides. This doesn’t hurt the animal, and gives its attacker something to eat while the cucumber gets away.
