Fun but Useless Facts on Worms And Sea Creatures
The snail mates only once in its entire life. When it does mate, however, it may take as long as twelve hours to consummate the act.
When leeches mate, the leech playing the male role (leeches are hermaphrodites and can assume either sex) clings to the body of the female and deposits a sac of sperm on her skin. This sac produces a strong, flesh-deteriorating enzyme that eats a hole through the female's skin and fertilizes the eggs within her body.
The Earthworm can clear and aerate half a pound of soil in a day. (There are, on average, 3 million worms per acre of fertile soil)
The worm is hermaphroditic, or bisexual; it can self-fertilize or mate with another of its species.
The worm has several sets of vital organs throughout its body, which is why it can be cut in half and still survive. If it is cut in the middle, its two ends will usually regenerate; if it is not cut in the middle one segment will live. However, if it is cut in too many places the whole worm will die.
A hundred tons of barnacles collect on the bottom of a steamship every year.
Lobsters do feel pain when boiled alive. By soaking them in salt water before cooking, however, you can anesthetize them.
When young abalones feed on red seaweed their shells turn red.
A 4-inch abalone can grip a rock with a force of 400 pounds. Two grown men are incapable of prying it up.
The starfish is the only animal capable of turning its stomach inside-out. As it approaches its prey (usually a member of the mollusk family), the starfish reverses its viscera, protrudes them through its mouth, and projects them under the shell of its victim. Then it slowly devours the fleshy underparts of the helpless mollusk by a process of absorption.
Sea worms mate in the following way: at mating time, males and females swarm together. Suddenly the females turn on the males and bite their tails off. The tails contain the males' testes and sperm. When they are swallowed and acted upon by the females' digestive juices, they fertilize her eggs.
Snails have teeth. They are arranged in rows along the snail's tongue and are used like a file to saw or slice through the snail's food.
At birth barnacles look like water fleas. In the next stage of their development they have three eyes and twelve legs. In their third stage they have twenty-four legs and no eyes. Barnacles stay fastened to the same object for their entire lives.