Agdgsgsgsg I’m LIVING for this Reef2Reef thread. This guy was worried about his urchins getting sunburnt so he made them little hats
IT GETS BETTER
In the wild these urchins will in fact carry a small rock or shell exactly on top like this and im so happy there’s people taking advantage of that and who care about their urchins as pets.
i visited an aquarium at some point, and our tour guide told that when the staff had a party, they put a little decorative plastic hat from a booze bottle into the sea urching tank, and just left it there because the sea urchins liked it, and kept taking turns in wearing it.
Discovering that sea urchins wearing hats is a thing in this world means so much to me rn
May I present my 4 year old bastard insisting on wearing my very buoyant thermometer
Agdgsgsgsg I’m LIVING for this Reef2Reef thread. This guy was worried about his urchins getting sunburnt so he made them little hats
IT GETS BETTER
In the wild these urchins will in fact carry a small rock or shell exactly on top like this and im so happy there’s people taking advantage of that and who care about their urchins as pets.
i visited an aquarium at some point, and our tour guide told that when the staff had a party, they put a little decorative plastic hat from a booze bottle into the sea urching tank, and just left it there because the sea urchins liked it, and kept taking turns in wearing it.
Discovering that sea urchins wearing hats is a thing in this world means so much to me rn
May I present my 4 year old bastard insisting on wearing my very buoyant thermometer
Did you know that sea urchins in the wild wear shells, rocks, leaves, and algae as hats? It’s theorized that they use the hats to help weigh them down and to protect them from predators. They might even help protect the urchins from UV rays and help camouflage them.
In aquariums apparently urchins kept taking parts of the exhibit to use as hats - including items like baby corals. To help keep the exhibits intact, staff started printing small 3D hats for urchins. These hats were not only functional - but made aquarium urchins so much more fashionable than their wild friends.
Extraordinary embroidery on Deepika Padukone’s 2019 Met Gala dress.
The Zac Posen dress was covered in 408 3D-printed embellishments.
‘Posen teamed up with GE Additive and Protolabs to create a number of 3D-made looks and accessories for attendees including Jourdan Dunn, Nina Dobrev, and Katie Holmes for last night’s soirée. The designer first started working with GE a year ago and the pieces were manufactured in Pittsburgh, WWD reports.
Padukone’s metallic pink lurex jacquard gown contained a complex, layered skirt spotted with 408 sea urchin-inspired baubles that were and hand-sewn to the fabric. The adornments were created using stereolithography, a 3D printing technique where a structure is constructed layer by layer using a liquid substance that’s solidified by a laser. After the accessories were created, they were metal plated and painted. The process of creating these decorations took over 160 hours.’ Harper’s Bazaar
Frederick H. Evans (British, 1853-1943) TR. SEC. SPINE OF ECHINUS. X.55, 1887, Gelatin silver print, George Eastman House Collection
In celebration of the season and the upcoming winter solstice, we invite you to enjoy this beautiful image of a snowflake. Actually, it’s not really a snowflake…It’s a photo-micrograph (or a photograph made through a microscope) of the spine of an echinus, or sea urchin. Photomicrography is a method that Frederick Evans experimented with early in his career that foreshadows his obsession with beauty in the structure of things, both organic and man-made. This photograph is part of a George Eastman House traveling exhibition, Ideal Forms: Photographs by Frederick H. Evans, that features an entire album of Evans’s photo-micrographs.
Sea urchins have modified mouth parts on the underside of their bodies called an Aristotle’s lantern. The lantern is made up of tooth-like plates that scrape up bits of food like algae, as seen here.
We specifically don’t scrub the algae in this habitat for the urchins, and I see them on the walls all the time, presumably getting a tasty meal. But I had never seen it in action before last week! Invertebrates are such cool little aliens!
I will always share videos of sea urchins eating, because I love the sudden appearance of shiny white tiny vampire teeth.
Here’s a diagram of the Aristotle’s lantern structure, if you’re curious what it looks like under all the prickles.
Variegated Sea Urchins (Lytechinus variegatus) can be found across the Caribbean and Western Atlantic ocean. In the wild they are mainly herbivorous, feeding on seagrass, but in captivity they can also be omnivorous. They use their tube feet for movement and for feeding.
