Sponges
Media
Part of The Young Citizen: The Magazine for Young People
- Title
- Sponges
- Language
- English
- Year
- 1941
- Subject
- Sponges
- Rights
-
- Abstract
- [This article illustrates various forms of sponges.]
- Fulltext
- A.rruL, 1941 THE YOUNG CITIZEN SPONGES SPONGES have been known for thousands of years. Yet it is only within the last seventy-five years that they have certainly been known to be animals and noi plants. Like plants they are always fixed and never move about. They do not have eyes or legs or any of the sense organs. They do not have any of the internal organs. that we usually think of as belonging to animals. Yet they have a way of feeding and type of egg cells and their developme11t that belong to animals. And in other obscure ways they resemble animals and not plants. Of course this means living sponges. Perhaps you are thinking of what we usually call 'lsponges," which are only the dry skeletons of sponges. In life these were all filled in and covered over with the soft jelly-like flesh·of living cells. Sponges of all kinds always. live in water. Most of them live in shallow water in the ocean. They are of many sizes and forms and colors. The skeletons of sponges are very interesting. The wonderfully beautiful skeleton of the "Venus's flower-basket," which is found in the Philippines, is made of flinty fibers intertwined and interwoven in ways so delicate and intricate that one wonders chat such a simple· and lowly creature as a sponge could have formed it and had it for its skeleton. Although sponges are in most ways very simple animals, they are rather difficult to understand, for t'hey are differe~t from the animals with which we are f, The only work the feed, and the sea reall:,_ him, bec"ause he gets all 6. of the currents of water wh. body. The surplus water po~rs out through another set cit openings. Sponges are never eaten by other animals, probably because they have a peculiar disagreeable odor and perhaps flavor. But other animals of many kinds live in sponges for their homes-worms, small crabs, mollusks, etc. Sponges adapted for commercial use are found in the eastern part of the Med.iterranean Sea, near the Bahama Islands, on the coast of Florida, and in other parts of the world. They are secured from the water by diving, dredging, and, in' shallow water, by long forks. Sponges are of different sizes and. textures. Some are large and .coarse; these are used for auto-washing. Smaller, finer sponges are used for many purposes. Sponge fishing is an important industry. P arious Forms of Sponges
- pages
- 143