By Ashley DrostGrade 10
Limestone Community School
A sponge is a hollow tube with many pores and opening's. A sponge takes in food via the water that flows through the pores. Sponges reproduce asexually and sexually. They reproduce asexually by budding. There are about 5,000 sponges in and throughout the sea. A lot of sponges are found in oceans but some of them can be found in lakes. They were the first group of animals that has specialized cells to do jobs. The cells are not advanced to form tissues. A sponge is radial symmetry or is asymmetrical. Sponges live singly or in colonies. Sponges react very slowly to what is around them and they have no brain. Sponges give off a toxin to make predators go away or to poison them.
Some of the substance they give off, humans, also use to make medicines. Sponges come in many different colors such as white, red, orange, yellow and black. Some sponges have a green color to them. The green color that is on them is called algae. Algae grows on sponges. Algae gives sponges oxygen and the sponge gives the algae carbon dioxide. This is called a symbiotic relationship. A sponge has carbon dioxide and other wastes removed as the water moves in and out through the pores. When two living things live off one another such as crabs that live in sponges, sponges themselves and also algae is called symbiosis. The algae on the sponge gives fish in the sea food to eat. For the crabs not only does the sponge give them a home to live in, they also give them food. Crabs are good for sponge also. This is because crabs go and kill other sponges that try to attack that sponge. Sponges are very important to fish because that is mostly their food source.
We did lab's in class about sponges and viewed, drew, and labeled them. They are all very different looking, and some were so little that they were hard to see. We also watched some movies about them. The movie we watched was called Blue Planet by BBC. The movie was about what sponges do in the sea. That movie showed me how they really are. It sowed how they feed, and also reproduce. The movie also showed how other fish need sponges to live, and also showed how much sponges differ. Sponges are definitely not all the same. They all react different and give different animals a home. They also all look very different in the movie we watched. There were some sponges with tentacle like things and others that were not. I would like to go undersea to actually see a live sponge.
