Tuesday, December 6, 2011

What is a sea cucumber?

It's a marine animal with an elongated body and a leathery skin that looks sort of like a giant slug. It has a skeleton of sorts, a support structure just beneath its skin.





Some varieties are edible, and are harvested for use in Chinese cuisine. Others are said to have regenerative properties, and the use of sea cucumber extract in tissue regeneration has been a subject of serious study recently.





Some interesting trivia: The collagen plates that make up its "skeleton" can be unhooked and reconnected at will. So a sea cucumber can literally liquefy it body to squeeze into a small space, and then reform to protect itself.





Also, several species can startle or entangle predators by literally squeezing their own guts out. (New ones grow back in 3-4 weeks.) This is known as "evisceration", and is sometimes accompanied by a toxic chemical that kills animals in the vicinity.|||It is a creature/animal that lives deep in the water.





Check this web site





Sea cucumbers are echinoderms鈥攍ike starfish and sea urchins. There are some 1,250 known species, and many of these animals are indeed shaped like soft-bodied cucumbers. All sea cucumbers are ocean dwellers, though some inhabit the shallows and others live in the deep ocean. They live on or near the ocean floor鈥攕ometimes partially buried beneath it.





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http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/an鈥?/a>|||Sea cucumber, known as B锚che-de-mer(French:lit. "sea-spade") are marine animals in the class Holothuroidea used in fresh or dried form in various cuisines. In Malaysia, it is called "trepang" (Malay tr墨pang), the Japanese call it "namako" and in the Philippines it is called "balatan". Most cultures in East and Southeast Asia regard sea cucumbers as a delicacy.





There are a number of dishes made with sea cucumber as this ingredient is expected to have a strong cultural emphasis on health. In most dishes, the sea cucumber comes out with a slippery texture. Common ingredients that go with sea cucumber dishes include winter melon, dried scallop, kai-lan, Shiitake mushroom, and Chinese cabbage.

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