Sand-Burying Organisms

By Anonymous -


Stingrays (Yellow-Spotted/Southern)
http://travelswithtam.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/coz-10-jan-para-night-yellow-ray-buried.jpg
Talk about the most intense game of hide-and-seek. When wanting to hide from predators, both Yellow-Spotted and Southern Stingrays will bury themselves in the sand. They swim to the bottom and flap their fins (or “wings”) until the sand is covering everything but their eyes and spiracles, so they can see and breathe. Their lightly colored skin allows them to blend in with the sand to an almost invisible extent. These types of stingrays are known as “benthic” stingrays, meaning they are always on the bottom of the ocean floor. This limits their amount of hiding places, so they have adapted to hiding underneath the ocean floor, so to say.
Another adaptation that has evolved from this behavior is known as their “stinger.” Certain stingrays, called “whiptail” stingrays (those from Family Dasyatidae) have sharp and venomous barbs that they use to “whip” their predators with when they try to attack, just like a scorpion. Benefits that come from these adaptations are mainly safety and help with population maintenance.
Stingrays that use this type of behavior in order to hide from predators have slowly but surely been “caught.” The stingray’s biggest threat, sharks, have adapted electro sensors called Ampullae of Lorenzini to help “hear” and “feel” the stingray’s heartbeat as they are searching for food. This is a great example of evolution and adaptation as predator and prey both adapt in order to survive.
Hermit Crabs


Hermit crabs are present all over the world, and chances are you have even had one as a pet before! Classified in Subphylum Crustacea, hermit crabs are not true hermits and are actually very social animals, living in groups of up to 100 individuals. Hermit crabs, unlike other crustaceans, do not have exoskeleton covering their abdomen, therefore, they use shells of deceased snails as protection for the soft portion of their bodies. As they grow, they must find new, larger shells to protect them. They are omnivorous and feed on just about anything they can get their claws on including small fish, invertebrates and plankton. 
Hermit crabs, although, are also a very suitable meal for many predators such as snailfish, pricklebacks, larger crabs, sea stars, sea birds and others. For this reason, hermit crabs tend to hide from predators through a mutualistic relationship with sea anemones, or they bury themselves in the sand, using the coloration of their shell as camouflage.    


Peacock Flounder

The Peacock Flounder is named for its beautiful peacock feather pattern, “but within eight short seconds that can change”. To protect itself from predators but also to trick its prey the flounder can change the look of its texture and pattern to blend into the sand on the ocean floor. And like the other two this little creature is also found down in the sand but the way it uses the sand is different. Unlike the two others that actually burrow in the sand the Peacock flounder goes to the bottom and lays on top of the sand with both eyes on the left side of its body so that it can still have full visual and changes his pigments. The Peacock flounder changes its pigments based upon the visual pattern it sees to match its surroundings and this includes specks of sand on the ocean floor. “This makes the Flounder’s eyes very important and if one of his full 360 visual eyes are damaged this can affect its ability to change and blend into the sand because his pigment change relies heavily on his visual surroundings.
          
Sources:
https://bioweb.uwlax.edu/bio203/s2014/defrance_made/ 
https://animalcorner.co.uk/animals/hermit-crabs/
http://www.seattleaquarium.org/hermit-crab

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