Pineapple sea cucumber, Oloturia ananas, Tripang, Prickly skin cucumber, Pointed teat sea cucumber, Armoured sea cucumber, Giant sea cucumber, Sand fish, Prickly redfish
Thelenota ananas, also known as pineapple sea cucumber, oloturia ananas, tripang, prickly skin cucumber, pointed teat sea cucumber, armoured sea cucumber, giant sea cucumber, sand fish or prickly redfish, is a species of sea cucumber found in tropical Indo-Pacific waters from the Red Sea and East Africa to Hawaii and Polynesia.
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DetritivoreDetritivores (also known as detrivores, detritophages, detritus feeders, or detritus eaters) are organisms that obtain nutrients by consuming detri...
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OmnivoreAn omnivore is an animal that has the ability to eat and survive on both plant and animal matter. Obtaining energy and nutrients from plant and ani...
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CrawlingOv
OviparousOviparous animals are female animals that lay their eggs, with little or no other embryonic development within the mother. This is the reproductive...
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Not a migrantAnimals that do not make seasonal movements and stay in their native home ranges all year round are called not migrants or residents.
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starts withThelenota ananas (pineapple sea cucumber) is a species of sea cucumber characterized by its large size, warm colors, and pointed, star-shaped teats covering the entire body, grouped in rows of 2 or 3, as seen in Figure 1. Their body is reddish-orange in color, with the teats slightly darker. They are able to reach up to 70 centimeters (28 in) in length, with a weight of between 3 kg to 6 kg, and have numerous large tube feet on the flat ventral side of their body. T. ananas is a slow growing organism.
The environment of T. ananas is found in clean, sandy bottoms of lagoons with a depth of up to 30 m, or in slabs near large coral heads and coral rubble, as depicted in Figure 2. They are typically located in seas surrounding India and in the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. The average water temperatures they thrive in are between 26-27 °C. The individuals are large and found dispersed in low densities.
T. ananas are widely distributed, but tracking these organisms in a non-invasive and accurate way is somewhat difficult. Mark and recapture methods can be difficult because their bodies are extendable, so measuring their body has proven difficult to scientists since the numbers are ever-changing. The body wall of T. ananas cannot be tagged because it affects the growth of the organism, and are later shed off altogether. Scratching marks into the body wall induces short-term trauma and does not last long enough for mark and recapture efforts. These methods all harm T. ananas in some form, so the best non-invasive way to track their growth and traveling is through photographs.
While generally considered sedentary, they have large tube feet hidden underneath their body which allow them to be highly mobile creatures and widely distributed. They are slow growing, but also longer lived and have lower mortality rates. T. ananas is diurnally active, meaning they're active during the day.
T. ananas plays an important role in coral reef ecosystems by recycling nutrients, bioturbating sediments, buffering sea water from ocean acidification to local scales, prey to a range of predators, and acting as a host for symbiotic biota.
T. ananas feeds exclusively on calcareous alga Halimeda sp.
