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In many cases, spines are a defense mechanism that help protect the animal against potential predators. Because spines are sharp, they can puncture skin and inflict pain and damage which may cause the predator to avoid that species from that point on. The spine of some animals are capable of injecting venom. In the case of some large species of ...
Sea urchin injuries are puncture wounds inflicted by the animal's brittle, fragile spines. [59] These are a common source of injury to ocean swimmers, especially along coastal surfaces where coral with stationary sea urchins are present. Their stings vary in severity depending on the species. Their spines can be venomous or cause infection.
Unlike other Cambrian animals, these groups had the basic vertebrate body plan: a notochord, rudimentary vertebrae, and a well-defined head and tail, but lacked jaws. [29] A vertebrate group of uncertain phylogeny, small eel-like conodonts , are known from microfossils of their paired tooth segments from the late Cambrian to the end of the ...
The word porcupine comes from the Latin porcus ' pig ' + spina ' spine, quill ', from Old Italian porcospino, ' thorn-pig '. [4] [5] A regional American name for the animal is quill-pig. [6] A baby porcupine is a porcupette. When born, a porcupette's quills are soft hair; they harden within a few days, forming the sharp quills of adults. [7]
This is called "quilling". Spines can also shed when the animal is diseased or under extreme stress. Hedgehogs are usually brown, with pale tips to the spines, though blonde hedgehogs are found on the Channel Island of Alderney. A skin-skeletal preparation Close-up of the last 5 millimetres (0.20 in) of a hedgehog spine (SEM microscopy) A ...
Hatching takes place after 10 days of gestation; the young echidna, called a puggle, [23] [24] born larval and fetus-like, then sucks milk from the pores of the two milk patches (monotremes have no teats) and remains in the pouch for 45 to 55 days, [25] at which time it starts to develop spines. The mother digs a nursery burrow and deposits the ...
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The ossicles may bear external projections in the form of spines, granules or warts and they are supported by a tough epidermis. Skeletal elements are sometimes deployed in specialized ways, such as the chewing organ called "Aristotle's lantern" in sea urchins, the supportive stalks of crinoids, and the structural "lime ring" of sea cucumbers. [13]