Some Excellent Japanese Echinoderms! Textures and Closeups!

I've been in Japan for the last 6 weeks studying Japanese sea stars at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tsukuba, Japan!

As this is my last week at the museum I thought I would share some neat pics of some of the interesting echinoderms that I've encountered over the last few weeks....

Trophodiscus almus. This is an unusual species, which brood baby sea stars on its top surface! You see those weird round to star shaped white spots on the surface? Those are the juveniles which live on the surface among the "forest" of spines present..

 A close up....  I've featured this species before as seen in Japan, courtesy of my colleague Yoichi Kogure!!   The Japanese name for this species is komochi-momiji, aka the "starfish with babies"

Close up of the stalked crinoid Saracrinus nobilis!  This closeup shows us the arrangement of plates on the various arms and how they fuse together to form the various skeletal architecture used to identify them and to compose the arm structure..

A picture of the stalk.. note the angles!!  Cool!

A slightly different crinoid.. a feather star. (an unstalked vs. the stalked species above).but a closeup of the arms and how they articulate and form different fused pieces...

Here's the spines of a beautiful species, Coelopleurus maculata! I've covered Coelopleurus briefly before. Their tests are naturally rich and colorful!!   

   

Again, to emphasize: The spine colors are NATURAL. nothing added!!

Here's what I believe to be Prionocidaris baculosa.. also with some unusual spine patterns...

An unidentified white cidaroid urchin with some wonderful spination...

an interesting tropical basket star!

and of course, OGMASTER!

Deep-Sea Starfish Mouths: What do YOU see?

BLEARGH!! 

Dytaster sp. 

So, the other day I showed some of my friends one of these close up shots and the reaction was varied. I said "BLEARGH" for one, some agreed. Some disagreed. Some were offended!! 

Others below I said were a "grin" which met with some disagreement. Who knew such contention came out of these closeups...

Are these close up of the mouths of Japanese deep-sea sea stars some kind of undiscovered rorchach blot? A window into the soul?? 

What do you see? 

Lithsoma sp.

Distolasterias sp.

Plazaster

Anthenoides

Pteraster

Solaster

Hippasteria

Thanks again to the National Museum of Nature and Science for their support of my visit!

Sea Cucumber Skin Up Close! Bizarre & Beautiful!

Thelenota ananas Via Wikipedia commons. Photo by Nick Hobgood

Cool Crowdsourced Photo time! This week..some gorgeous closeups of the neat skin textures on tropical sea cucumbers!

Some of these give you an idea of how colorful and unusual the skin in sea cucumbers can be. This one is called  Thelenota rubolineata (the species name literally means "red lines"). This is an example of what the whole animal of one of the pics below looks like...

What do they feel like? Sort of soft and rubbery. Firm. And yes, people eat these species...

Here's a nice roundup of similar closeup photo essays of other echinoderms 

1. Here's the one for Up close Starfish! 
2. Another one showing close ups on Crinoids (aka Feather stars)
3. COLORS! in brittle stars! 
4. Crabs that live in sea cucumber anuses! here.
5. Worms & Snails that live on sea cucumbers! here. 

Below.. you will find many different close ups of the skin of sea cucumbers.

this one is Thelenota I think...

Some striking full body pics...