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First printing

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN (hardback) 978-1-4222-3528-7 ISBN (series) 978-1-4222-3523-2 ISBN (ebook) 978-1-4222-8348-6

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WILDLIFE ODDITIES INCREDIBLE INSECTS MYSTIFYING MAMMALS PECULIAR PLANTS REMARKABLE REPTILES SHOCKING SEA CREATURES PICTURE CREDITS Page:

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CONTENTS

Wet and Wild

4 6 8

Fantastic Fish Fashion

Coral Kingdoms

Underwater Forests Deadly Defense No Bones About It

10 12 14 16 18 20

Hefty Hunter

Touring the Ocean

Mammals Who Live Like Fish The Biggest Animal Ever—Period 22 Living in the Coldest, Darkest, Place on Earth 24 Sea Creature Facts 26 Sea Creature Words 28 Sea Creature Projects 30 Index 32

There is more ocean covering the Earth than land. And you can find sea creatures in almost every drop of it—shallow and deep, icy and warm. There are monster mammals bigger than any animal ever to have lived living next to tiny creatures so small that you can’t even see them without a microscope. Scientists have hardly begun to count all the different kinds of fish. The smallest, the dwarf goby, would fit on your fingertip. The largest, the whale shark, weighs as much as six elephants. Strangely, the giant whale shark’s diet includes some of the sea’s tiniest creatures, which are called plankton.

7 Check out the whale shark’s huge, gaping mouth! Inside are 300 rows of tiny teeth. But it doesn’t use those teeth to hunt—it is a filter feeder.

4.

The ocean is also home to reptiles such as turtles and sea snakes. You’ll find creatures like lobsters and crabs, too, with shells as hard as armor but no skeletons. Other sea creatures have soft bodies but no armor—octopuses can change color and squirt clouds of black ink, sea anemones look like flowers, and some starfish are covered in thorns. Oceans cover more than two-thirds of the Earth’s surface. They stretch down deeper than the tallest mountains reach to the sky. There are probably many weird sea creatures that we have not even discovered yet.

SIDEBAR

SUPER SQUID The giant squid grows to more than 54 feet (18 m) long. It also has no bones! The squid’s huge, bullet-shaped body has eight arms and two stretchy tentacles that make it an expert swimmer. Unlike most fish, it can move backwards, too! Medium: 5,88,0,0 Dark: 19,100,0,12

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A crown-of-thorns starfish munches on some coral. Starfish have gobbled up whole sections of the Great Barrier Reef off Australia. 7

7 The giant Pacific octopus is the largest octopus in the world. It can grow up to 30 feet (9.6 m) from arm tip to arm tip.

5.

Not all fish have fins or scales—or even eyes or tails for that matter. There is no such thing as a standard fish shape! Some look like the fish we see in aquariums. Some look like rocks. Others look like seaweed, and some are so good with camouflage, that you can’t even see them at all. There seems to be no limits to a fish’s outline. Eels are fish that look like snakes. In warm waters, tiny garden eels pop up and down from burrows in the seabed. In cold, deep waters, snipe eels snap up shrimp in jaws that look like beaks.

Garden eels are strange fish that bury their bodies in the seabed. Their top halves wave in the current picking up food. They are ready to duck down when danger approaches. 7

Flying fish have fins that look like wings. They use them to leap out

of the water and glide through the air. Fish called rays are shaped like kites. They seem to fly underwater when they flap their fins. Some rays have

a secret weapon—a tail that can give attackers a nasty sting.

8 Manta rays are huge but

harmless—even though they are related to sharks. From wingtip to wingtip, they may measure as much as 18 feet (6 m).

6.

Hagfish look like eels with no jaws. These ugly mugs burrow their way into the skin of dead or dying fish, eating the flesh as they go. Their other tricks include tying themselves in knots and producing loads of slime.

7 The hagfish’s tiny teeth are perfect for gnawing bits of fish flesh. Four feelers around the mouth help the hagfish find its food.

SIDEBAR

STUNNING WEAPONS Electric rays use a stun gun to catch their prey! These fish can cover themselves with electric current. If a creature Medium: 5,88,0,0 Dark: 19,100,0,12

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swims too close, it gets stunned with a shock!

7.

The colorful coral reefs in warm, shallow ocean waters may look like piles of rock. But they are built from the skeletons of millions of tiny animals called corals. The corals grow in all sorts of weird shapes. Some look like broccoli, and others look like brains! As hard as they look (and may feel), coral are very sensitive and easily damaged. Beautiful, rainbow-colored fish live among the coral. There are blue parrotfish, yellow angelfish, and orange-and-white clownfish. Clownfish swim among the deadly stinging tentacles of one type of sea anemone. For some mysterious reason the clownfish do not get stung—but any enemies chasing them do!

8.

A cleaner wrasse grazes on the face of a grouper fish. The wrasse gets a free meal, and the grouper gets a free bath. 8

Many other strange creatures live on the reef.

Giant clams are shellfish with a shell so big that a baby could take a bath in it. Clams are filter feeders,

which means that they catch small plankton as they take in mouthfuls of water. Then they spit out the water and swallow their food.

7 One reef may be

8 The boxer crab carries a small anemone in each pincer. These “boxing gloves” pack a stinging punch!

home to as many as 350 different corals. The amazing shapes they form provide millions of hidey holes for the other reef creatures.

SIDEBAR

A TRIP TO THE BARBER Small fish called cleaner wrasse seem to like danger. They swim right into the mouths of fierce hunting fish such as groupers and moray eels. They do this because that’s where the tiny creatures they eat live! Wrasse clean fish’s scales and even “brush” their teeth. Cleaner wrasse are also called barber fish. Medium: 5,88,0,0 Dark: 19,100,0,12

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9.

You might not guess that just offshore in some parts of the ocean, forests of kelp grow as tall or taller than most trees on land. Other types of seaweed grow there too. These plants provide food for some sea creatures and hiding places for others. Sea otters gather up mussels and other shellfish that live around the kelp. They use stones they’ve carried up from the seabed to crack open the mussels on their chests. Otters also twist into strands of weed so that they can take a nap without being washed out to sea!

Sea otters live in the North Pacific. They do not have blubber to keep their bodies warm; instead, they have denser fur than any other mammal— with 1 million hairs per square inch.

7

10.

SIDEBAR

DAD AS MOM Seahorses are mixed-up parents. The dad, not the mom, keeps the growing babies in his belly. When he gives birth, hundreds of tiny seahorses stream out into the sea. Medium: 5,88,0,0 Dark: 19,100,0,12

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The most elegant creatures among the weeds are seahorses and leafy sea dragons. They may look weird and have strange names, but these creatures are actually fish. Leafy sea dragons look just like floating pieces of seaweed. This disguise helps them hide from hungry hunters.

7

Can you see the eggs under this male leafy sea dragon’s tail? He will guard them for 6 to 8 weeks until they hatch.

11.

Some of the most deadly natural poisons in the world are created by sea creatures. It’s a handy weapon. Some use it to

defend themselves against bigger creatures. Others use poison to kill or stun their prey.

The Belcher’s sea snake has the most deadly bite of any snake on land or in the sea. Its fangs inject super-strong poison into its victims. Luckily, this nasty creature attacks fish rather than people. The blue-ringed octopus may look too small and pretty to be dangerous, but its bite can kill a person in just a few minutes.

7

The blue-ringed octopus lives off the coast of Australia. When it is about to strike, its blue rings get brighter.

8 The stonefish lies on the seabed in warm, shallow waters, look- ing just like a stone. Beware of treading on one, though—it has spines tipped with enough venom to kill you.

12.

SIDEBAR

The octopus’s spit contains the same poison that is found on the skin of the deadly pufferfish. The pufferfish has a smooth body until it senses danger. Then it puffs itself up, and its spikes stick out of its skin, turning the fish into a prickly ball. Pufferfish swallow lots of air or water to puff up their bodies and show off their spines. If this does not scare off a predator, a tiny taste of the fish’s poisonous flesh soon will! 7

TASTY POISON? Eating pufferfish, or fugu, is a special treat in Japan. People who eat fugu like to have a tiny taste of the poison. It adds to the flavor—and numbs the mouth! Medium: 5,88,0,0 Dark: 19,100,0,12

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13.

When you have no bones, the water is a wonderful place to call home. All sorts of flubbery, rubbery creatures that would be nothing

but squishy puddles on land move gracefully in the sea. The water lets them float and supports their weight.

Jellyfish are wobbly, see-through animals that hardly look like animals at all. They come in shades of pink and blue and look like something you might find in a candy store. Jellyfish have circular bodies, called bells, and trailing tentacles that can sting. The most dangerous is the box jellyfish, nicknamed the “sea wasp.” It has about 60 tentacles with enough poison to kill a person.

7 A jellyfish drifts along with its tentacles trailing. The camera flash has made the jellyfish look pink, but really its body is blue.

14.