{"id":15173,"date":"2024-07-26T06:26:58","date_gmt":"2024-07-26T00:56:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=15173"},"modified":"2025-04-03T09:01:14","modified_gmt":"2025-04-03T03:31:14","slug":"sea-urchins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/sea-urchins\/","title":{"rendered":"What are Sea Urchins?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><strong>About Sea urchins:<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>They belong to a group of <strong>marine invertebrates<\/strong> called <strong>echinoderms,<\/strong> which means spiny-skinned animals.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>It includes other well-known marine creatures <strong>like starfish and sea cucumbers.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Habitat:<\/strong> They can be found in <strong>various marine environments<\/strong>, including rocky shores, coral reefs, seagrass beds, and sandy bottoms. They live on the ocean floor, usually on hard surfaces, and use tube feet or spines to move about.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Appearance:<\/strong> Sea urchins are characterized by their <strong>spherical<\/strong> to somewhat flattened, <strong>spiny bodies<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>The largest urchin (known from a single specimen) is <strong>Sperostoma giganteum of<\/strong> deep waters off Japan.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Features<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>They have a <strong>globular body and a radial arrangement<\/strong> of organs, shown by five bands of pores running from mouth to anus over the test (internal skeleton).<\/li>\n<li>The pores accommodate tube feet, which are slender, extensible, and often sucker-tipped.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>They have a <strong>hard exoskeleton<\/strong>, or test, made up of interlocking plates or ossicles, which are often covered with movable spines.<\/li>\n<li>From nodules on the test arise long, movable spines and pedicellariae (pincerlike organs); these structures may have poison glands.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Food Habit<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>They are herbivorous, primarily <strong>feeding on algae and plant material.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>They use their <strong>specialized mouthparts,<\/strong> called <strong>Aristotle&#8217;s lantern<\/strong>, to scrape algae and other food sources from rocks or the seafloor.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Q1: What are invertebrates?<\/h3>\n<p>Invertebrates are characterized by their lack of a backbone or vertebral column. Instead, they have other structural features that support and protect their bodies. Invertebrates comprise a vast array of animal groups, including insects, spiders, crustaceans, mollusks etc<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/sci-tech\/science\/sea-urchins-fed-waste-cabbage-to-spare-japans-seaweed-forests\/article68444719.ece\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Sea urchins fed waste cabbage to spare Japan&#8217;s seaweed forests<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sea urchins belong to a group of marine invertebrates called echinoderms, which means spiny-skinned animals. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":15174,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15173","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}