Adelaide's Planarian
Red-headed Mouse Spider
S3, Male, dorsal
| Adelaide's Planarian | | Red-headed Mouse Spider S3, Male, dorsal | | ||
 | Class: | Animals (Animalia) - Sponges (Porifera) - Demosponges (Demospongiae) | |||
| Order: | Demosponges (Demospongiae) | ||||
| Family: | Demosponges (Demospongiae) iNaturalist Observation | ||||
| Species: | Demosponge (Demospongiae sp) | ||||
| This Photo: | 🔍Profile🔎 | ||||
Thank you Ben Travaglini for identifying and David Muirhead for confirming the id of this species for us General Species Information: Seen in Coastal Areas ~120mm wide. Found on the beach by our little 16m old grandson. Ben said "As far as I can ID, sponges can be tricky." Dave then said "Many, sometimes most of the sponges found beach washed (anywhere in the world AFAIK, but certainly here in southern Australia) are very different in appearance, slightly reduced in size and much lighter (density/weight). And when they are very degraded like your grandkid's example, they have lost basically all their living colour. They usually look light brown or grey, even white, when they've been degraded (by natural processes of decay) to this extent. Really they are just the mineral skeleton at this stage. Your sponge might have been grey, orange, mauve, pink, red or just about any colour of the rainbow when alive and attached to substrate. | |||||
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