English: Palm like ringed worms

"From the brilliant sunlight one enters the semi-obscurity of the large aquarium hall. Great tanks, with plate-glass fronts, are around the sides of the room, and a double row in the middle partially divides the hall. The only light enters through the water, so that one has the impression of being in a submarine environment. The sea-water is stored in large tanks upon the upper floor, then, mixed with air, circulates through the aquaria and finally runs into a sand-filter in the basement to be again pumped into the upper tanks. Every fourteen days a fresh supply is pumped in from the sea. A perfectly developed system of collecting enables the institution to exhibit the most beautiful and interesting animals of the bay of Naples in large numbers and in the best condition. A little book published in Italian, German, French and English gives, in simple language, just such a description of the animals, their habitat and behavior, as will appeal to the public. There are many"happy families" File:PSM V77 D222 One of the happy families in the aquarium.pngformed upon long observation of the different kinds of animals that may live together without acquiring too marked a taste for one another. The aquarium containing the coral animals is constructed like a grotto under the arch of which one sees the orange-colored polyps spread about like marigolds. Some of the related anemones File:PSM V77 D223 Echinoderms and anemones.png are actually old, as is shown by their long, wrinkled, thick-skinned bodies, but their straight, or slightly curled tentacles of purple, or lavender, or cream-color, or brown, are most beautiful.Among the echinoderms File:PSM V77 D223 Echinoderms and anemones.png the methods of feeding are interesting. The sea-cucumber holds fast to a rock by means of the suckers at the tips of its tube-feet, and, with tentacles widely expanded like the branches of a tree, waits for minute crustaceans and the larvae of all sorts of animals to comfortably settle themselves upon the hospitable branches. Then, with the least possible motion, the sea-cucumber very gradually bends a tentacle over and into the mouth, and, as it is again extended one of the two small tentacles scrapes off the resting organisms. So each tentacle, in rhythmical succession, takes its turn in the feeding process. Some species of star-fishes File:PSM V77 D223 Echinoderms and anemones.png have large mouths and can swallow snails and mussels whole, sometimes consuming as many as twentyfive or thirty mollusks of various kinds at one meal. Other star-fishes have mouths too small to receive the animals commensurate with their appetites and so they simply turn their stomachs inside out, covering over a clump of oysters, and thus forming a sort of external stomach into which the secretion from the digestive glands is poured. When the soft parts are thus dissolved and absorbed the star-fish pulls in its stomach and goes on in its devastating course. The sea-urchin File:PSM V77 D223 Echinoderms and anemones.png has an apparatus known as Aristotle's lantern providing five strong teeth worked by powerful muscles with which it catches live worms and crabs. The sea-crawfishesFile:PSM V77 D224 Sea crawfish and other crustaceans.png, built like lobsters except for the absence of the large pincers, most perfectly convey the impression of life on the bottom of the sea. They seem like uncanny agents of evil as they solemnly stalk about over the rocks, poking their great antennae into each other's affairs and always having several claws out for a fight, yet seldom engaging with one another. Some of the veterans, however, have lost an antenna, or a leg, and the missing parts are being regen-erated. The semi-transparent squids, with posterior triangular fins, swim back and forth as delicately poised as submarine monoplanes. When a live fish is placed in the water the squid darts at it, grasps it firmly with the suckers or the tentacles and cuts off the head, eating only the body. The cuttlefish, with broader body, striped like a zebra, and big elephantine head, constantly undulates a fin-like fringe around the border of its mantle, as it nervously drifts here and there. Frequently it wriggles into the sand which it throws upon its back, or, if much disturbed, ejects a cloud of ink in which it disappears. The large octopus File:PSM V77 D225 Squids octopi riman and conger eels.png has a body that suggests both a toad and a spider, with highly developed eyes and brain projecting above it. Generally this devil-fish lies sleeping in a corner of the rocks, or lazily reaching out and creeping about by means of eight long tentacles that express a giant's strength. With a spurt of water from its siphon the octopus may dart rapidly through the tank, and by directing the tube of its siphon, go whither it wills. Lying upon the bottom of an open trough, often buried in the sand, is the very interesting electric ray. If one presses the fingers upon the broad body where it runs into the tail he will, in the words of a Cook's guide,"get a strike." The electric tissues are descended from muscle fibers which in the course of evolution have come to produce electricity instead of motion. In the embryo ray the primitive muscle cells first appear, then they swell out anteriorly and shrivel up posteriorly until each loses the characteristic striated muscle structure and becomes an electric plate lying in a little compartment embedded in a jelly-like substance. Electricity is produced by some chemical action upon innumerable minute granules stored up in the protoplasmic network pervading the electric plates. The shock is brought about by the stimulation of the electric nerve, which in turnacts upon very minute electric rods that release the electricity." THE ZOOLOGICAL STATION AT NAPLES By Professor CHARLES LINCOLN EDWARDS THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, SEPTEMBER, 1910

The European fan worm (Sabella spallanzanii) is one of the largest species in the family Sabellidae with a leathery tube and spiral feeding fan that can reach 10 to 15cm in diameter. The tube can protrude up to 40cm above the sediment and bury as deep as 10cm into the sediment. Sabella commonly forms clumps of two or more individuals, creating a canopy of feeding fans that stretches over the sediment (O’Brien Ross and Keough 2006).

This tube-dwelling worm remains inside its tube and extends a fan-like crown of tentacles through the opening of its tube. When the worm is disturbed it withdraws into the tube and closes the end off. The tube is often covered with encrusting or fouling organisms and the fan colour varies from white and pale fawn through to orange and banded red-brown (CSIRO 2001). The crown is composed of two lobes, only one of which is spiralled (NIMPIS 2002).