• What are the animals of the sea?
• Types of sea animals
• Characteristics of sea animals
• The most dangerous marine animals
• List of sea animals

We explain what the sea animals are, what types exist and their characteristics. Also, examples and which ones are the most dangerous.

In addition to fish, the sea has enormous biodiversity.

What are the animals of the sea?

Sea animals or marine animals are those that are adapted to life within the sea, on its surface or on its banks. Since our planet is in two thirds of its surface covered by Water, the life marine encompasses a huge and diverse number of animals, spread over the five oceans and adapted to your habitats specific.

Marine animals include the descendants of the organisms oldest known. In fact, as far as we know, life had its beginnings in the primitive oceans of the Precambrian geological era, billions of years ago.

However, not all life forms have the same origin, as many species of reptiles Y mammals marine come from species from the mainland, which is they adapted back to the ocean.

The sea is also home to millions of species of microorganisms and plant species, which play a very important role in the oxygenation of the planet. In addition, they hold the rest of the food chain Marine.

In other words, the oceans are an important source of biodiversity in the world and of constant food for various non-marine species, including the human being.

Types of sea animals

Deep-sea fish only rely on light that they can produce themselves.

Broadly speaking, we can classify marine animals according to the different regions of the aquatic mass of the oceans in which they live. We have like this:

• Surface animals. Those closest to Sun and therefore accustomed to warmer and brighter waters, where algae and plankton abound, but also predators.
• Reef animals. That form extensive communities around coral, stones and kelp forests of various kinds, in some of the most biodiverse places on the planet, equivalent to tropical forests, but under the sea.
• Deep animals. They live in colder and darker waters, deeper, in a more exclusive and challenging habitat.
• Abyssal animals. Inhabitants of the deepest, darkest, icy and inhospitable regions of the sea, to which the sunlight and that they are under immense environmental pressures.

Characteristics of sea animals

Marine mammals have lungs and must return to the surface to breathe.

Sea animals are very diverse in nature, as they are distributed throughout various underwater environments and integrated into Trophic chains highly specific.

Thus, it is possible to find representatives of practically all kinds: microorganisms or microscopic animals; invertebrates like sponges, worms, jellyfish and mollusks; arthropods; echinoderms; a great variety of bony and cartilaginous fish; mammals of aquatic life; reptiles Y amphibians, and on the surface, crossing land, air and water, different species of birds.

However, among such a diversity of life forms, we can distinguish large groups according to their breathing. Some breathe through underwater mechanisms, such as gills. On the other hand, others still possess lungs to breathe the air, being forced to rise to the surface every so often to breathe.

Similarly, marine animals differ from terrestrial animals in that their limbs are adapted to the displacement within the aquatic fluid, which is why the presence of legs is replaced by fins, even in those animals that come evolutionarily from a terrestrial habitat.

The most dangerous marine animals

There is a wide variety of jellyfish that can cause different intensities of damage.

In general, marine life does not pose a threat to humans, although unfortunate encounters do exist and do occur from time to time. Humans are not part of any food chain in the ocean, so no animal views them as potential food, except by mistake.

That does not mean that there are no animals with the potential to harm us, such as:

• The shark. Contrary to what the movies would have us believe, shark attacks are extremely rare and accidental, although possible. Of the bulk of the species of sharks, only a few are capable of injuring a swimmer or a diver, and among them are the tiger or blue shark, the White shark and eventually some blue sharks.
• Frog fish. These species of reef fish have various names, such as scorpion fish, toad fish, salamander fish, but they have in common their camouflage that makes them look like a stone. Along with other species endowed with bright and showy coloration, these animals have poisonous glands capable of inducing catastrophic failures in the organism, whenever we step on them by mistake or eat them carelessly.
• Jellyfish. There is an enormous diversity of jellyfish of different sizes, from microscopic to several meters in length. length, such as the famous Portuguese Warship (Physalia physalis). The latter is capable of killing a human being if it were to become entangled in its long and poisonous tentacles, which would induce paralysis and death by drowning. This would, of course, be done without the jellyfish proposing it at all.

List of sea animals

The blue whale can weigh up to 180 tons and is the largest animal in the world.

A necessarily partial list of marine animals would include the following:

• White shark (Carcharodon carcharias)
• Tiger shark (Galeocerdo cuvier)
• Hammerhead shark (Sphyrna mokarran)
• Sardine (Sardine pichardus)
• White tuna (Thunnus alalunga)
• Sea anemone (Actinaria sp.)
• Pillar Coral (Dendrogyra cylindricus)
• Hermit crab (Birgus latro)
• Sea lobster (Palinurus elephas)
• Stone fishSynanceia horrida)
• Whale shark (Rhincodon typus)
• Blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus)
• Orca whaleOrcinus orca)
• Common seal (Phoca vitulina)
• Sea lion (Otaria flavescens)
• Common octopus (Octopus vulgaris)
• Marine angelfish (Chaetodontoplus septentrionalis)
• Stingray (Birostris blanket)
• Brunette (Gymnothorax javanicus)
• Green mussel (Perna viridis)
• Portuguese warship (Physalia physalis)
• Barracuda (Sphyraena barracuda)
• Marine crocodile (Crocodylus porosus)
• Common dolphin (Delphinus delphis)
• Spider crab (Macrocheira kaempferi)
• Marine iguana (Amblyrhynchus cristatus)
• Imperial cormorant (Leucocarbo atriceps)
• Common pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis)
• Seagull (Larus argentatus)
• Grouper fish guasa (Epinephelus itajara)
• Hawksbill turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata)
• Abyssal pelican fish (Eurypharynx pelecanoides)