Sea potato is a sea urchin, but it is not quite like the usual known sea urchin. It is more heart-shaped, vaulted and up to 5 cm in size with a gray-yellow color. Sea potato lives buried 15 – 20 cm in the sandy bottom and lives in a mud-covered cave that communicates with the surface via an open channel. The Sea potato uses its spikes to dig down and with its suction feet it collects the bottom material with living particles that are fed to the mouth on the underside of the animal. You see regularly the fragile shells of dead animals in thousands washed up on the west coast of Jutland. Sea potatoes rarely have spikes. Like sea urchins, sea potatoes are soft animals that protect their vulnerable bodies with a lime shell.
Did you know that:
The sea potato can often be found undamaged on the beach even though they are paper thin and have been thrown around the sea. The material form has been used in science to invent new light and strong materials. It has been found that the sea potato vary the strength of different areas of the shell, not by making thicker and thinner struts, but by putting fewer and more. Man has copied this technique in various constructions.
