Sea pigs are a kind of sea cucumber that belong to the genus Scotoplanes. While there are multiple
species in this genus we’ll be focusing mainly on the globosa species in this episode mostly
because they’re the most iconic and they have the coolest name. Globosa. These plump, pink creatures
live in the depths of the ocean and together with the other deep-sea dwelling sea cucumbers
make up upwards of 95% of the total weight of animals on the seafloor. That’s a lot of piggies.
Overall not much is known about sea pigs because they’re not exactly easy to study.
For one, they’re extremely fragile and since one of the only ways to get them up from them bottom
of the ocean is by trawling them with a net a lot of specimens will just kind of disintegrated
when they’re caught. Poor little blobs. Plus, because they live at depths anywhere from
half a mile to more than three and a half miles (1000 to 6000 meters) below the ocean’s surface,
they’ve evolved to live in conditions that are extremely difficult to replicate on the surface.
Down there it’s completely void of light, the temperature typically hovers right around
freezing and the water pressure is so great it would make a styrofoam cup shrink to less than
half its size. While we have been able to keep a few sea pigs on the surface it was never for
long stints of time and the cost was really high. Sorry to dash the hopes of anyone out
there wanting to own a sea pig. On the plus side, since they’ve become more popular as a species,
you can get toys of them (though why they have eyes is beyond me…).
Sea pigs possibly got their name for two reasons.
One is because they generally look somewhat porcine possessing a pinkish toned body and
short, stumpy legs. Another could also be based on their mud-sifting eating habits. Either way,
you wouldn’t want to take a bite out of one of these piggies. They have toxic chemicals
in their skin making them highly unpalatable. Besides, how could you eat such an adorable thing?
They are usually about 5 inches long [12.7 cm] and could probably easily fit into the palm of your
hand. They’re mostly made of water so I wonder if it would be anything like holding a water balloon.
Their “legs” (which are really called tube feet) come in pairs of usually 5 to 7 with the
bottom “legs” used for locomotion. I say bottom because the antenna looking things on top of them
are actually feet as well, though they’re not used for walking. These are more like nose… feet. It’s
believed that these are used as a sensory organ, like a nose, that aides in finding food that’s
less than 100 days old, since they prefer it fresh. And what they eat you might find kind of
gross. Marine snow is an amalgamation of plankton debris, dead animal particles and poop. This is
part of the main portion of a sea pigs’ diet. They also eat microbes on the seafloor, though probably
their favorite meal is dead whale. While up until this point I can’t remember thinking to myself,
“I wonder what happens when a whale dies,” now I have a pretty good idea. Something that’s pretty
cool is that when sea pigs find a large deposit of food, such as a whale carcass, they will gather in
droves to that spot. I’m talking like hundreds of sea pigs all in one spot. And when they do that,
it’s been observed that they will all face in the same direction. They do this so that they’re
facing the prevailing current thus giving them more opportunity to detect the best spot for food,
though I feel like this could be the premise for some alien cult movie or something.
Sea pig dietary habits are actually pretty important. They’ve been described as the
earthworms of the sea and if you want to know more about what that statement might mean,
we have a video for that! While they forage through the soil and consume oxygen eating
microbes then end up releasing oxygen through their waste making the sediment
better for tons of small animals living on the seafloor, or, you know, the other 5%.
Unlike some other sea cucumbers, they don’t have fish who frequently like to
live in their butts nor do they expel all their organs as a defense mechanism for predators,
though we’ll have to get back to that in another episode. In reality, we’re not completely sure
if sea pigs even have any predators, though we do know that they are hosts to parasites,
one being a snail that burrows into their body and feeds on them internally and a tiny
crustacean that bores holes into them and eats their organs. *audible shudder* Nope. Just nope.
Sadly, we also don’t have much information on how they reproduce or even how long they can live,
though I guess that means, for now, we can pretend they’re all thousands of years old
and planning their world invasion or, you know, how to eat a shark.
For more facts on sea pigs you can check out the links in the description. Let us
know in the comments what animal you’d like to learn about next. As always,
thank you for watching and be sure to give a thumbs up for more Animal Fact Files.