TIL: These Spiny Sea Creatures Can Regrow Lost Body Parts
What can liquefy its limbs, throw up its own stomach and still live? Echinoderms, a group of sea creatures that can regenerate their own body parts! In this episode of Today I Learned, National Geographic Explorer Paul Bump tells you all about echinoderm’s incredible capacity for regeneration.
Without much ability to make toxins, shoot out ink, or fight back, echinoderms have found a different way of escaping. Now, replacing body parts may sound crazy, but echinoderms do it all the time to evade predators.
The sea cucumber, a slow moving echinoderm, may not be able to outrun predators, but when under attack it can eviscerate its own guts as a distraction while it scoots away. When brittle stars sense a disturbance on one of their limbs they can liquefy that tissue and release the arm, only to regrow it later.
SERIES PRODUCER: Christopher Mattle
PRODUCER/EDITOR: Laurence Alexander
ASSOCIATE PRODUCER: Elaina Kimes
