The sea mouse, (Aphrodita aculeata), is a marine polychaete worm found in the North Atlantic, the North Sea, the Baltic Sea and the Mediterranean. The sea mouse normally lies buried head-first in the sand. It has been found at depths of over 2,000 metres (6,600 ft).
Its body is covered in a "dense mat" of setae (hairlike structures) from which the name "sea mouse" derives. Its scientific name is taken from Aphrodite, Greek goddess of love. This is because, when viewed ventrally, the sea mouse resembles a human female's genitalia. Sea mice generally fall within a range of 7.5 to 15 centimetres (3.0 to 5.9 in), but some grow to 30 centimetres (12 in). They are scavengers, eating the remains of dead and decaying animals. The worm may also be so named because of its resemblance to a "bedraggled mouse" when it washes up on shore.
Read more about Sea Mouse: Spines and Coloration
Famous quotes containing the words sea and/or mouse:
“What do the botanists know? Our lives should go between the lichen and the bark. The eye may see for the hand, but not for the mind. We are still being born, and have as yet but a dim vision of sea and land, sun, moon, and stars, and shall not see clearly till after nine days at least.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Why do precisely these objects which we behold make a world? Why has man just these species of animals for his neighbors; as if nothing but a mouse could have filled this crevice?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)