Orange puffball sponge

Did you know?

The body of a sponge is supported by a matrix of fibers made of a structural protein called spongin and an interlocking skeleton of spicules. High powers of healing and regeneration are within this sponge's sphere. When parts become infected, the puffball uses the spicules to isolate and shed the infected parts, then regenerate the lost parts.

Conservation

Sponges are an important part of the ocean ecosystem as a source of food for nudibranchs, chitons, sea stars, turtles, and some fishes.

Cool facts

• A sponge's body is a collection of loosely connected and nearly independent cells. They have no organs and no tissues. These are the only animals that can put themselves back together again if broken.
• Many biologists have been searching for the animal group that is the ancestor of all animals. When Mitch Sogin, a biologist at the Marine Biology Lab at Woods Hole, compared the genetic blueprint of a sponge with those of other animals, he discovered that all animals with more than one cell are based on a sponge's genetic blueprint.
• Scientists have described and named more than 5,000 of the probable 10,000 to 15,000 species of sponges, which come in various shapes and sizes.
• Adult sponges are sessile, meaning they are unable to move on their own. They produce potent chemicals to defend themselves against other animals that try to overgrow, poison, infect or eat them. These chemicals don't harm the sponges themselves. They contain the same properties of anti-bacterial and anti-cancerous drugs that don't kill healthy cells. Scientists are researching these chemicals in hopes of finding new disease-fighting drugs.