Echiurans are found in all oceans.
Echiurans eat bits of dead plants, animals, and microorganisms that live on sand, mud, and rock.
Echiurans are not considered endangered or threatened.
Echiurans (eh-key-YUR-enz) are sea creatures sometimes known as spoon worms or fat innkeepers. They have bilateral symmetry (bye-LAT-er-uhl SIH-muh-tree) and can only be divided into similar halves along one plane. Their sausage-shaped bodies are soft, unsegmented, and have two distinct regions, the proboscis and body trunk. The proboscis (pruh-BAH-suhs) is a long, flexible, tubelike snout. The tr…
To feed, some echiurans extend the sticky proboscis out of the burrow and onto the surrounding sea bottom. The tip of the proboscis gathers particles of food and covers them with a sticky coat of mucus. The cilia move the particles back toward the mouth. Other species are filter feeders. Fat innkeeper worms, Urechis caupo, build a sticky net of mucus and place it near the opening of their U-shaped…
Physical characteristics: The female has an egg- or sausage-shaped body measuring up to 5.9 inches (15 centimeters) long. The proboscis is long and notched at the tip and reaches up to 4.9 feet (1.5 meters). The body is dark green. Green bonellia have one pair of hooks underneath the body. The flattened, colorless males are much smaller (0.039 to 0.11 inches; 1 to 3 millimeters) and do not have a …
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