Thelenota ananas
species of sea cucumber
Thelenota ananas, also known as pineapple sea cucumber, oloturia ananas, tripang, prickly skin cucumber, pointed teat sea cucumber, armoured sea cucumber, giant sea cucumber, sand fish or prickly redfish, is a species of sea cucumber found in tropical Indo-Pacific waters from the Red Sea and East Africa to Hawaii, Polynesia, the Maldives and Australia.
Description
Thelenota ananas (pineapple sea cucumber) is a species of sea cucumber characterized by its large size, warm colors, and pointed, star-shaped, spotted teats covering the entire body, grouped in rows of 2 or 3, as seen in Figure 1. Their body is reddish-orange in color, with the teats slightly darker. They are able to reach up to 70 cm (28 in) in length, with a weight of between 3–6 kg (6.6–13.2 lb), and have numerous large tube feet on the flat ventral side of their body. T. ananas is a slow growing organism.
Environment
The environment of T. ananas is found in clean, sandy bottoms of lagoons with a depth of up to 30 m (98 ft), or in slabs near large coral heads and coral rubble, as depicted in Figure 2. They are typically located in seas surrounding India and in the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. The average water temperatures they thrive in are between 26–27 °C (79–81 °F). The individuals are large and found dispersed in low densities.
Behavior
T. ananas are widely distributed, but tracking these organisms in a non-invasive and accurate way is somewhat difficult.
The public source identifies “Thelenota ananas” as species of sea cucumber. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Thelenota, ananas and species.
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This entry incorporates text from “Thelenota ananas” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.