Today's Video

Sponges with Tim&Moby


Moby found some salt water sponges while he was skinny dipping yesterday. But the truth is that sponges can survive in salt water and fresh water. Sponges belong to a animal kingdom called invertebrates, that is animals without bones. Crabs and centipedes are also invertebrates. The real name for a sponge is called Porifera phylum, weird name Hun. Sponges are very simply structured animals. Adult sponges are sessile, which means they stay in one place for their entire life. A sponge's body is made of cells in two layers. Also, sponges are filter feeders, which means they collect food from water that pass through them. Small amounts of oxygen and food are carried into the central of the sponge where little organs called flagella keep water moving in and out of the sponge. Other specialized cells digest food, spread it across the body, and let the water carry out the waste. Human cells does the same thing. Fishes and other predators will not eat sponges sometimes because some have hard, spike like spicules and a tough spongion skeleton. That is right, when sponges die, people use them as bath sponges. Sponges offspring in two ways. The asexual way is to have a little sponge grow on the side of an adult and let the current carry it off and then anchor itself in a new place. New sponges can grow from pieces of a broken sponge, that's like what a starfish does. The other way is to produce two gametes, gametes are reproductive cells. The sponge push out the two gametes at the same time. over time, the gametes merge together and that begins a fertilization. That is also like plants making pollination. Sponges are some interesting animals.