California Sea Cucumber (Parastichopus californicus),
California, USA, Pacific Ocean. Photograph by Gerald and Buff
Corsi, Visuals Unlimited/Getty Images Remember the turtle that
pees through its mouth we told you on Neatorama last year? Well,
here's a kindred spirit: the giant California sea cucumber
(Parastichopus californicus) that eats using its anus as a
second mouth. Oh, as if that's not enough, it also breathes
through its butt. You read that right: Their first hint that the
sea cucumber anus was doing triple duty came from a structure
called the rete mirabile, a set of blood vessels that connect
the sea cucumber’s respiratory trees with its gut. Initially,
Jaeckle, of Illinois Wesleyan University, and Strathmann, of the
University of Washington, thought that the rete mirabile was
used to transfer oxygen from the respiratory trees to the gut.
But if P. californicus were obtaining food via its anus, it
would likely use the rete mirabile to transfer the food to the
gut. To test their idea, the team fed s