We tend to think of sea cucumbers as shit-shaped things that go squirt (spilling out their slimey guts) when disturbed. A few species are unashamedly naked and rude for good measure. The family Synaptidae, however, look distintively uncucumber-like, appearing more like long worms or serpents with a rapacious head of feathery tentacles. In the seagrass meadow at Semakau, we found a large specimen (probably Polyplectana kefersteinii) about a metre long by one of the transect lines, weaving through the ascidian-encrusted (those green things on the leaf blade) Enhalus strands like a slow brown snake. The soft and sticky body lacks tube feet and is collapsible (the small specimen on the right is lying jellylike in a shallow tidal pool). I have yet to learn why they are called 'synaptic' though. Their feeding tentacles gather edible particles from the water to the mouth and without the elongated body, they could well be feather-stars, to which they are distantly related.
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