Princess of Poop
Princess of Poop
By Alexandra Mercer
What is grosser than gross? Some beach sand is actually fish poop! The particular fish known to help create these sandy beaches is the princess parrotfish. Not typical princess behavior, is it?
The princess parrotfish is anywhere from eight to thirteen inches long. This is about the size of a piece of notebook paper. It can be found on reefs in the Western Atlantic Ocean. Although all 88 species of parrotfish have bright colors, much like tropical birds, they actually get their names from their teeth beak.
The parrotfish does not have an actual beak. Its strong front teeth are fused together, forming a parrot-like beak. These teeth chip away at both living coral and algae growing on dead coral. In doing so, the parrotfish gets a mouthful of food, along with unwanted calcium carbonate. Calcium carbonate is the white, brittle substance that makes a coral’s rock hard skeleton.
In the back of the fish’s throat are more teeth. These molar-like teeth grind this excess calcium carbonate into finely crushed sand. Once swallowed, the fish’s body absorbs the nutrients from the food, while the ground calcium carbonate is excreted, settling to the ocean floor as sand.
The princess parrotfish discharges little clouds of sand every few minutes. They can discharge up to ten pounds a day for an estimated five tons a year! Ten pounds is about the weight of a cat and five tons is about the weight of an elephant. Like it or not, this discharge, or more simply known as poop, is what helps to create the beautiful, white, sandy beaches people sit on!
Maybe beaches of poop are not so gross after all! What may sound gross at first can actually be normal behaviors for many animals. But as normal as this behavior may be for these swimming sand factories of the sea, scientists still consider it to be quite spectacular!
