Cyrene Critters

Here are some creatures that were seen on our trip to Cyrene:

The proverbial knobbly sea star on Cyrene.


But baby ones are the cutest!


A really large black sea cucumber. It was probably around 20-30 cm long.


A synaptic cucumber. Why was it thus named? My guess: the ends of the cucumber look like the axon terminals of a neuron (nerve cell, found in our nervous system) which send signals across a synapse to another neuron. But that's just a guess. Heh.


The underside of a sand star. It proceeded to flip itself over.. rather gracefully too, I might add.


Sea urchin. Painful if you get poked by the spines. The little bulb-like thing in the middle is actually.. er-hem.. its anus. It's mouth is on the bottom so naturally you'd want your anus to be as far from your mouth as possible.


A carpet anemone with an anemone shrimp on it! (the bunch of white spots is the shrimp. I've seen it while diving in Indonesia but never thought I'd find it in Singapore.)


A snapping shrimp. Hard to see but one of its claws is much bigger than the other. I've heard that they can actually shatter thick aquarium glass, so definitely think twice before buying one for your aquarium.