Uncle John's Creature Feature Bathroom Reader For Kids Only!

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  TASSELED WOBBEGONG

  This bizarre-looking creature likes to bury its flattened body against the sea floor and wait for lunch to swim by. Its amazing camouflage of patterns and colors make it look like leftover shag carpet…which is why it’s also called a carpet shark. This native of the South Pacific hides out in caves, or rests on coral reefs down to depths of 130 feet.

  Now you see him…

  BIG BLUE (DAY) OCTOPUS

  Say hello to one of the supreme masters of sea disguise. Not only can a big blue octopus change color, it can alter the texture of its skin to look just like the reef rock it lives on. That’s a great survival skill for a creature that hunts in broad daylight. While diving off the coast of Hawaii, one marine biologist watched a big blue change its look 1,000 times in seven hours.

  …now you don’t!

  IT WAS TH-I-I-I-S BIG!

  More of the biggest sea creatures ever found.

  • The largest leatherback turtle ever recorded was 10 feet from tip to tail, and weighed in at 2,019 pounds.

  • A trumpet conch collected in 1979 off the coast of Australia was 30 inches long and 40 inches around. The snail inside it weighed 40 pounds, making it the largest marine snail on record.

  • The largest sea star was found in the North Pacific Ocean. It weighed 11 pounds and was nearly 38 inches in diameter.

  • The largest clam ever collected was taken in 1917 from Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. It was 49 inches long and weighed 579 pounds. An even bigger clam was discovered in 1965, measuring 53 inches in length. But the divers left it on the reef to keep on growing!

  • In 1934 a Filipino diver found a huge pearl 10 inches in diameter and weighing 14 pounds. Today the pearl, now known as the Pearl of Lao-tze, is worth $40 million.

  SEA SQUIRT

  Talk about losing your mind. This guy eats his own brain!

  Sea squirts are tunicates—animals made up of a simple tube, which they use as a siphon to suck in passing plankton. Unlike worms and jellyfish, sea squirts have a backbone, which makes them vertebrates, just like us. In fact, scientists think sea squirts may have been one of the first vertebrates to exist on the planet. In the early stages of its development, a sea squirt embryo looks much like any other vertebrate’s embryo, whether it’s a rat, fish, lion, or human. And baby sea squirts are born with a brain, just like people. So you could say that the sea squirt is our distant cousin.

  The sea squirt does something unique in the sea world. A baby sea squirt uses its brain to pick out a permanent place to live. Once it’s found a spot of rock to attach itself to, it doesn’t need that brain anymore—so the sea squirt eats it. Really.

  It absorbs its simple brain back into its body and goes on merrily with its simple life—sucking in, blowing out, sucking in, blowing out…

  BIG MOUTHS

  What do these three fish have in common? They can all swallow prey larger than themselves.

  GULPER EEL

  This deep-sea fish isn’t much more than a giant mouth with a tail so long that it sometimes gets tied in knots. The average gulper is about two feet long, although some can grow to six feet. Their huge mouths are hinged loosely so they can open them wide like a net. This lets them “gulp” animals much larger than themselves. Conveniently, a gulper’s stomach stretches out to handle a “biggie size” meal. Gulpers live way down deep in the ocean, anywhere from 3,000–10,000 feet.

  HAIRY ANGLER

  The hairy angler was only recently discovered when one drifted into range of a BBC camera during the filming of the documentary The Blue Planet in 2003. The hairy angler’s Latin name is Caulophryne polynema, which means “stalked toad with many filaments”—a good description of this peculiar fish. Its beach ball-sized body is covered in long antennae called neuromasts which pick out the movements of any prey foolish enough to come close to its mouth, which is full of fanged teeth. Like the gulper eel, it can loosen its jaws to swallow prey bigger than it is, and digest them in its expandable stomach. Hairy anglers haunt the black waters of the Atlantic Ocean down to 8,000 feet.

  FANGTOOTH

  The fangtooth’s teeth are so big that it can’t close its mouth. In fact, it has the largest teeth of any fish in the ocean its size. So it’s a good thing this guy is only six inches long. Also called an ogrefish, the fangtooth’s squat body is covered with small prickly scales. This is a tough critter: Able to withstand incredible pressures and near-freezing temperatures, the fangtooth can be found all over the world at incredible depths of down to 16,000 feet.

  THE SALTY SEA

  It’s big. It’s wet. And you can’t drink it.

  Why do lakes and rivers have fresh water, while the ocean has salty water? Doesn’t all that fresh river water flow right into the ocean? Yes, but on its way to the ocean, that water sucks tons of minerals and chemicals out of the land. By the time it enters the big blue sea, it’s full of iron, calcium, magnesium, potassium, silica, nitrate, chloride, and…sodium (salt). When this mineral-packed water meets the ocean, the sea life makes good use of it. Plankton use the silica to make their shells. Shrimp, lobsters, and crabs use the calcium to make their claws and armor. Lots of sea creatures use some of the minerals in the water, but none use sodium, so it stays in the water.

  So how much salt is in the ocean? Four billion tons of it run into the ocean each year. For every ton of seawater, there’s about 70 pounds of salt mixed in. Some seawater is saltier than others. The Red Sea is the saltiest because it lies in a hot, dry region, between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where the intense heat causes evaporation; as more water is drawn into the atmosphere, more salt is left behind. The Arctic Ocean is the least salty for the same reason. The colder the ocean air, the less evaporation and the less salt.

  SNOT BALLS!

  How do creatures at the bottom of the sea get food?

  There’s a mystery that’s puzzled marine biologists for years. They knew that the ocean bottom is crawling with creatures who feed on sediment that settles down to the ocean floor. But they also knew that the sediment contained barely half the food needed to support the population of bottom creatures. So where do those bottom feeders get the rest of their food?

  The answer lies near the surface, where little animals called giant larvaceans make homes for themselves out of their own mucus. The tadpole-sized creatures spin a mucus web about three feet wide, and hide in the middle of it while it snags their food for them. The web works for about 24 hours before it gets clogged. Then the larvacean jumps ship and starts spinning a new web. The old web sinks all the way to the bottom of the sea, picking up little animals and bits of algae on the way. When these glops of snotty goop finally hit the bottom, the creatures down there gobble them up. And scientists believe these “sinkers” account for half the food on the ocean floor!

  THAR’ SHE BLOWS!

  Whew! Gotta cut down on the plankton!

  Did you know that whales fart? It’s true! Like humans, they are mammals, so scientists have long figured that whales would pass gas just like every other animal in the world. Now there’s proof. Marine biologists in the Antarctic were tracking Minke whales (a relatively small whale, weighing about 5,000 pounds and is 25 feet long) when one of them (a whale, that is) cut a big one. The bubble was more than six feet in diameter when it popped up at the surface near the bow of the ship. The stench was so bad that the scientists frantically ran to the back of the ship to get away.

  Now, what Uncle John wants to know is—who pulled the whale’s flipper?

  GHOST SHIPS

  The ocean is huge. Ships are tiny. Sometimes they get lost…forever.

  THE MARY CELESTE

  There were 10 people on board the Mary Celeste when the 103-foot sailing freighter left New York harbor on November 7, 1872. Captain Ben Briggs, his wife, his two-year-old daughter, and a crew of seven were bound for Genoa, Italy, carrying a cargo of rubbing alcohol. A month later another ship, the Dei Gratia, spotted the Mary Celeste drifting near the Azores, several hundred
miles off the coast of Portugal. When the crew boarded the ship, they found it deserted. There was no sign of a struggle or evidence of any emergency. The kitchen and living quarters were all neatly stowed away. The captain’s logbook was open on his desk, with the last entry dated from a week before. It was as if everyone on board had just gotten up and walked off the ship. No trace of Captain Briggs, his family, or the crew was ever found.

  THE OCTAVIA

  The whaling ship Herald was sailing off the coast of Greenland in 1775 when it spotted a derelict ship floating among the icebergs. The whalers promptly sent a boat and crew over to see what had happened. There they found the Octavia’s crew below deck—frozen solid and perfectly preserved. The captain was still at his table in his cabin, hunched over his logbook, his pen still in his hand. Afraid that the sailors had died of a plague, the whalers hurried back to their own ship, taking only the Octavia’s logbook to prove they’d seen the vessel. The last entry in the logbook was dated 1762, which meant that the Octavia had been drifting around the Arctic Ocean for 13 years!

  THE OURANG MEDAN

  Late in July 1947, an American freighter named the Silver Star was navigating the Strait of Malacca off the coast of Indonesia when its radioman picked up frantic distress signals from the Dutch freighter Ourang Medan. The badly garbled messages rambled about the captain and crew having died mysteriously. There was a burst of gibberish in Morse code, followed by an ominous, “I die.” Then the signals stopped. It took the Silver Star several hours to reach the Ourang Medan. When a boarding party was sent over to investigate, they found a truly ghastly sight: The crew and officers lay in grotesque positions, their eyes wide open, arms thrown out to the sides, looks of terror gripping their dead faces. The ship’s dog was dead, too, its teeth bared as if threatened by some unknown menace. Weirdest of all was the sudden chill the rescue team felt while exploring the boiler room—even though the outside temperature was over 100° F. The captain of the Silver Star decided to tow the Ourang Medan to the nearest port. While the crew was attaching tow lines, smoke began to pour out of the ghost ship. The Silver Star barely had time to cut the lines and pull a safe distance away before the Ourang Medan blew up and sank.

  OFF THE DEEP END

  Q: What happens when you throw a red rock into the Black Sea?

  A: It sinks.

  Q: What happens when you throw a green rock into the Red Sea?

  A: It gets wet.

  Mom: Did you give the goldfish fresh water today?

  Kid: No, they haven’t finished the water I gave them yesterday.

  Q: What do sea monsters eat?

  A: Fish and ships.

  Q: Where do ghosts swim in North America?

  A: In Lake Erie.

  Q: What do you get when you graduate from scuba diving school?

  A: A deep-loma.

  GNARLY TEETH–THE QUIZ!

  Only one answer to each description is a real animal. The others are all phonies. Can you guess the real one?

  1. This creature’s nose is lined with long, pointed teeth. When it swims into a school of fish, it whips its snout around like a samurai sword, slashing fish left and right. If something good to eat is buried in the sand, it uses its nose like a rake to get at it.

  a) Clam-rake shark

  c) Spear shark

  b) Sawshark

  d) Samurai shark

  2. It swims with its mouth slightly open, so it can breathe. On the hunt, it locks onto its target like a streamlined torpedo. This predator has 3,000 teeth in seven rows in its mouth. When a tooth breaks off, the one behind it moves forward and takes its place.

  a) Torpedo shark

  c) Great white shark

  b) Mega-toothed shark

  d) Sandpaper shark

  3. This animal looks like it has a jousting lance attached to its head. The lance is actually a long, spiraled tooth. The animal is often seen floating on its back, its tusk pointing up at the sky. In medieval times, its tusks were sold as unicorn horns.

  a) Unicorn whale

  c) Spiraled-tusked whale

  b) King Arthur’s whale

  d) Narwhal

  ANSWERS

  1–b) The sawshark is actually a ray. Like other sharks and rays, it has special receptors on its snout that help it detect tiny electrical impulses of live prey. It’s not a danger to humans—unless you happen to get in the way of its nasty sharp nose.

  2–c) The great white shark’s teeth are made for grabbing and tearing. But these teeth are more sensitive than your fingertips. That’s why great white sharks “mouth” their prey first, to see if it’s a tasty enough to eat. But the taste-test can be bad news for most animals: Even if the great white decides not to take a second bite, the “mouthing” is often fatal.

  3–d) The narwhal’s mysterious tusk (its left front tooth, actually) is the only spiraled tusk in nature. And, unlike most teeth, it’s soft on the outside and hard on the inside. It is so sensitive that the narwhal may be able to detect changes in weather—which is important when you live in the icy waters of the Arctic Ocean.

  AMAZING JOURNEY

  When Cassandra Villanueve boarded the ferryboat Aloha on June 2, 1974, she thought it would be just another ho-hum crossing between the Philippine islands. But 600 miles south of Manila, the Aloha caught fire and sank. In the confusion, Mrs. Villanueve fell overboard. She drifted in the rough seas for 12 hours (thankfully, she’d had time to put on a life jacket). When help arrived, it came in the form of a giant sea turtle! The turtle dove down and came up beneath Mrs. Villanueve, lifting her straight out of the water, and began to swim with her on its back. Soon a much smaller turtle climbed onto the turtle’s back beside Mrs. Villanueve. It seems the little turtle had decided Mrs. Villanueve had to stay awake, because whenever she dozed off, it nipped her on the back. Two days later, a Philippine navy ship found them. When the sailors pulled Mrs. Villanueve onto a rescue boat, the sea turtles slipped beneath the waves and disappeared.

  TURTLE TIMES

  Fascinating facts about one of the world’s great swimmers.

  • Sea turtles have been swimming in the oceans since the time of the dinosaurs—around 75 million years.

  • The leatherback turtle is the fastest swimmer. They’ve been timed at a speed of 22 miles per hour!

  • Sea turtles have an excellent sense of time and direction. Scientists think they use the Earth’s magnetic field to navigate thousands of miles across the ocean.

  • Sea turtles can see very well under water, but out of the water their vision is blurry and nearsighted.

  • Unlike land turtles, sea turtles cannot pull their heads and flippers into their shells for protection.

  • When baby sea turtles first enter the water, a “swim frenzy” takes over. They will swim nonstop for 24 to 48 hours to get to deeper, safer water.

  • Scientists call the first year of a baby sea turtle’s life “the lost year” because they are rarely seen during that time.

  • Of every 1,000 turtle eggs buried in the sand, only 800 will hatch. Of those 800, only 400 will survive the dangerous run to the ocean. Of those 400, only 200 will live for more than two years, and only one will survive the hazards of the sea to become an adult. That turtle can expect to live from 30 to 70 years.

  • Once they enter the water, male sea turtles never leave the sea. (Females return to the beach where they were born to lay their eggs.)

  • Some turtles can actually breathe through their butts. All turtles have a hole between their back legs called a cloaca that they use to get rid of poop and pee, as well as lay their eggs. Some small turtles suck in air through their cloaca and save it in little air sacs. The Fitzroy River turtle of Australia gets almost two-thirds of its air this way.

  MORE DOLPHIN FACTS

  Dolphins love to play. Favorite games? Blowing bubbles, tag, and toss-the-seaweed.

  Dolphins are closely related to cows, pigs, and deer.

  A dolphin’s skin feels like rubber.

/>   A bottlenose dolphin replaces its top layer of skin every two hours.

  Dolphins can dive down 1,000 feet under the ocean and come right back up. If a human diver did that, the sudden change in water pressure would kill him.

  A dolphin can propel itself through the water at more than 24 mph. A human needs a boat to go that fast.

  Dolphins use echolocation to “see” in murky water. By listening to the echoes of their clicks, dolphins can identify the size and location of objects they can’t see with their eyes.

  THE LOST WORLD

  People have been looking for the lost continent of Atlantis for 2,000 years—but did it ever really exist?

  THE LEGEND

  About 12,000 years ago, according to some stories, a great civilization called Atlantis sprang up on an island continent in the western ocean. The Atlanteans were light-years ahead of other humans, and their advanced technology made them the masters of the world. They built great temples and monuments in their dazzling city. Nothing seemed beyond the reach of their immense power. Then suddenly—they were gone. A violent earthquake ripped open a gaping hole in the ocean. Atlantis sank into the sea and was never seen again.