Coloration in animal kingdom plays wide variety of roles, to attract opposite sex, to warn enemies and to camouflage. Like in terrestrial animals such great coloration also present in aquatic animals. Following are list of some of incredibly colorful ocean creatures.
10 Christmas Tree Worm
Christmas tree worms are colorful marine creature distributed throughout tropical oceans around the world. These worms have two brightly colored Christmas tree like crowns. This marine creature also named after these crowns that composed of colorful spiral plumes, giving it resemblance with tiny fin tree. The plumes of Christmas tree worms comes in different colors including red, orange, yellow, white and pink. Christmas tree worms also used their plumes for feeding. They easily trap plankton and other small particles using these plumes and cilia then transport those particles to worm’s mouth.
9 Flower Hat Jelly
Flower hat jelly is a colorful rare species of jellyfish native to Western Pacific ocean, look like hat with flowers on it. They have shining, multicolored tentacles protected from it’s translucent, pinstriped bell. The color of flower hat jelly varies as yellow, orange, pink, purple, green and blue. They uses tentacles to catch small fishes and to make painful sting on enemies. The sting from flower hat jelly is not deadly to human but very painful.
8 Nudibranch
Nudibranchs are jelly bodied, shell less mollusks lives throughout world oceans. There an more than 3000 species of nudribranchs in the world. These mollusks are noted for their striking color. Some species of nudibrachs evolve color pattern that matches their surrounding. They used this coloration as a primary defense mechanism to escape from predators. At same time some other species of nudibranchs used their intensely bright color to warn predators about poison lie within. These mollusks are mostly found on ocean floors, can’t swim or move too fast. Some species of nudibranchs feed on sponges and some feed on sea slugs. Most species of nudibrachs feed only one kind of prey.
7 Sea Anemone
Sea anemones derived their name from equally colorful terrestrial anemone flower. There are more than thousand described species of sea anemones lives in throughout world ocean. They spend most of their time attached to seas floor by their adhesive legs. The color of sea anemones ranges from pale to bright fluorescent colors. Sea anemones have a cylindrical shaped body, tens to hundreds of poison filled tentacles surrounding central mouth. They used these tentacles to find their food, inject paralyzing neurotoxin.
6 Starfish
One of the most beautiful and colorful sea creatures found in all the world oceans. There are 1500 known species of starfish in the world. Starfishes have very striking colors in various shades of grey, brown, blue, orange and red. The insanely bright colors of starfishes camouflage them, also used for warn potential predators. In fact they are not actually fishes, they don’t have gills or fins like fishes. Star fishes are belonging to family of sea cucumbers, sea urchins and sand dollars. Even though five armed varieties of start fishes are well known some species with 10, 20 or up to 40 arms also can found in world oceans.
5 Parrotfish
The colorful parrotfishes are named after parrot like beak. There are 90 species of parrotfishes are in total, lives in subtropical and shallow tropical oceans around the world. The gender and coloration repeatedly changes during the development of parrot fishes. Almost all species of parrotfishes are born as females and change their gender to male during their development process. At earlier phases the color of parrotfishes varies as brown, grey or red. As they mature parrotfishes change color to vivid green or blue colors. In some species of parrotfish the color pattern remains same for all stages their life.
4 Blue Tang
Blue tang is one of popular fishes of marine aquarium, have Indo-Pacific distribution. Blue tang is also known as regal tang, royal blue tang and hippo tang. They have gorgeous blue body, yellow tail and beautiful black markings. The younger blue tang fishes are bright yellow in color with blue spots around the eyes. But at final phase of development most of their body becomes blue in color with dark markings. Blue tangs lives singly and in groups up to 10-12 members. They primarily feed on alga and planktons.
3 Regal Angel Fish
Regal angel fishes are medium sized angel fishes found in tropical Indo-Pacific oceans. They are notable for their striking colors in different patterns. The body of ragel angel fish features altering bluish-white and orange stripes. Their dorsal fins also have such beautiful patterns and the caudal fin appears in deep yellow color. Ragel angel fishes have maximum size up to 9.8 inches and primarily feed on sponges and tunicates.
2 Mantis Shrimp
There are more than 400 species of mantis shrimp in the world. Mantis shrimps are found in tropical and sub-tropical waters of Indo-Pacific oceans. They have very brightly colored body and the color of their shell varies as red, orange, blue and green. The eyes of mantis shrimps are also variably colored and considered as most elaborate visual system ever discovered in animal kingdom. They can see both polarized and ultra violet light. They have 12 different types of photoreceptor for color analysis where most of humans only have four visual colorant. Mantis shrimps also have trinocular vision which help them to see every objects using three different part of their eyes.
1 Clownfish
Clownfishes are one of most beautiful and brightly colored fishes in the world. The color of their body varies as orange, red or yellow with distinctive white stripes. This coloration also makes clownfishes as most recognizable reed-dwellers in the world. There are 30 known species of clown fishes in the world, found within shallow waters of Indo-Pacific oceans.
Clownfishes are also known as anemone fishes because they live freely with poisonous sea anemones. Both clownfish and anemone get benefit from their mutual life. Clownfishes can swim freely between poisonous tentacles of sea anemones. It protect clownfishes from the potential predators. At same time the fast movement of clown fishes help the anemones to increase circulation and to find food.
