Fun Salp Facts For Kids

Salps, more commonly known as sea squirts, belong to the order Salpida and are a member of the Tunicata family. Salps are closer to humans than jellyfish, which they resemble.

Salps are relatives of all animals that have a backbone and a tough, rod-like chord that protects their central nervous system and serves as a point for the muscles to attach themselves to the body. Adults lose this rod-like chord as they grow.

Salps are important to the ocean ecosystem as they keep the growth of phytoplankton in check due to phytoplankton being a crucial part of their diet.

Another important part they play in the ecosystem is when they die and descend to the ocean floor, they provide a carbon-rich food source to bottom-dwellers and help them to survive.

Salps are one of the most intriguing marine animals, and to this day, they amuse marine biologists with their behavior and existence. Read on for more facts on salps.

If you liked these facts about Salp, then you'll surely like these facts about immortal jellyfish and Irukandji jellyfish too

Salp Interesting Facts

What type of animal is a salp?

Salps are a barrel-shaped, planktonic tunicate and belong to the tunicates group of animals which are commonly known as sea squirts. They move by contracting their bodies and pumping water through their gelatinous body and are the species that show a history of jet propulsion movement. They pump water through their feeding filters while feeding on phytoplankton.

What class of animal does a salp belong to?

Sea salps belong to the Thaliacea class of animals within the Tunicata group. It is free-floating throughout its lifespan. Salp fish are abundant in nature and are usually transparent, and they can either be solitary or live in colonial forms of long chains.

How many salps are there in the world?

Due to their abundance in temperate and equatorial cold climates, they are high-density and are commonly found in the Southern Ocean. There are even more salps than there are kirlls.

However, due to a lack of data, the accurate population count of salps is hard to estimate. There are 70 species of salps, including the giant fire salp and the giant sea salp, and 20 of these species are found in southern Australian waters.

Where does a salp live?

Salps or tunicates live in the Southern Ocean and can be found in abundance in deep water.

What is a salp's habitat?

A salp is often found in the offshore marine environment feeding on phytoplankton and anything that it can catch in its feeding net. They are common in equatorial, temperate, and cold sea and ocean bodies like the Antarctic Ocean and the Austral Ocean.

This species is often seen in the marine ocean and sea habitats off the Sydney coast in Australia.

Who do Salps live with?

These interesting gelatinous marine animals can be found living a solitary life or can spend their entire life in groups in a chain and complete a life cycle. In some colonies, a salp forms chains, and in others, they take the shape of a wheel. These chains can be nearly 50 ft (15m) long.

How long does a salp live?

Salps have a life cycle that can be around two weeks to three months before becoming food for fish and other marine animals. They are either eaten or they become too heavy due to the chains of salps as they continue to feed on the abundant phytoplankton.

How do they reproduce?

These jellyfish-like species of animals are complex when it comes to sexual reproduction as their life cycle can alternate between sexual and asexual forms. Their sexual form that mates with females or males is called aggregates as they form colonies during breeding.

When giving birth, females produce one or two eggs. Mating usually occurs in larger male aggregates, and the embryos are grown inside the aggregate body and nurtured through a placenta.

In the asexual method, they reproduce clones and release embryos known as 'stolons', meaning buds of young aggregates.

Their reproduction is based on how abundant phytoplankton is in their ecosystem. If there is an abundance, they will reproduce quickly and take advantage of this and feed on them.

What is their conservation status?

The IUCN Red List has listed salps as Not Evaluated as this gelatinous species of animal is abundant in the Southern Ocean. There is no sign of them coming close to extinction or being endangered.

Salp Fun Facts

What do salps look like?

Salps are barrel-shaped or cylindrical and have semi-transparent bodies. They are often found on beaches and seashores and are mistaken for jellyfish. The salp anatomy is intriguing, to say the least.

Even though they look and feel like jellyfish, salps are closely related to vertebrates as they have a backbone and a dorsal nerve cord. Salp gills form at some point in their lives, and they use these to breathe when they come up to water surfaces to feed.

How cute are they?

This jellyfish-like species is docile and they usually swim around minding their own business in the deep parts of the marine biome. They are small and look cute when solitary or in their chain.

How do they communicate?

Salp chains are mostly linked by attachment plaques which link one salp to the other. Sensory cells are found in the other epithelium at one side of the plaque.

These sensory cells expand when they emerge with the apex of the cell. Since these creatures have a brain, unlike jellyfish, the input from the plaques is sent to the sensory cells which evoke activity and stimulation around the brain in the chain which causes all the salps in a chain to separate or move when commanded.

How big is a salp?

Salps have varying sizes which can change from birth to adulthood. They can grow from 0-4 in (0-10 cm). The Thetys vagina or the twin sailed salp is the largest solitary species of salps and can grow up to a length of 13 in (33 cm)/

How fast can a salp swim?

The speed at which a marine salp swims cannot be determined due to data deficiency. However, salps are the only creature in the ecosystem that uses jet propulsion as a method to move around the ocean as they glide through.

How much does a salp weigh?

Due to a lack of data deficiency, an accurate weight count of salps is not known.

What are the male and female names of the species?

No particular name has been assigned to either gender of this marine species.

What would you call a baby salp?

A baby salp has no particular name assigned to it. In the case of asexual reproduction, each parent will produce one embryo and nourish it through a placenta, and on release, these small juvenile buds form a salp chain of 20 to 80 identical embryos.

When it is time to reproduce, the mature salp chain will separate and become solitary individuals.

What do they eat?

The majority of the diet of salps comprises phytoplanktons. They control phytoplankton blooms in water bodies and help to thin their population. Besides phytoplankton, salps also eat a bunch of other things like bacteria, larvae, and different sizes of particles that are unfortunate enough to get caught on the surface of their net.

Are they dangerous?

No, salps are not dangerous. They are docile creatures that feed on phytoplankton blooms and have no particular animals that they prey on.

Would they make a good pet?

No, salps will not make good pets as a very delicate marine ecosystem has to be mimicked in an aquarium or fish tank. A jellyfish carousel-type tank is needed alongside a virtual plankton farm as a food source. Since their lifespan is short, it is not recommended to keep salps as a pet.

Did you know...

Salps, unlike jellyfish, have a nervous system that is complex in nature and a functioning digestive system that comes with a brain, heart, and intestines.

Eutrolife is a system used to treat eutrophic water bodies by filtering surface water and redistributing excess nutrients taking its inspiration from salps. This is because they can filter food particles through their mucus net by rapidly sinking pellets and redistributing carbon to deeper layers of their body.

Salps can be found in all seas. However, they are most abundant in the Southern Ocean near Antarctica and form a large part of the marine ecosystem and help to thin the phytoplankton population by feeding on them.

The carcasses of salps are carbon-rich and are a great food source for surface-dwelling marine animals.

Even though salps look like jellyfish, they are not related to them, and their evolutionary history is more closely related to that of humans.

Unlike other tunicates, salps float on the water and do not attach themselves to rocks or piers like others.

Salps create jelly tubes and other juvenile fish purposely swim into them to protect themselves and hide from predators. It almost looks like salps are eating the fish but it is a form of shelter.

What think is a jellyfish on a beach may be a salp as they also wash up at the shore. If you are living in an area where there is a lot of phytoplankton, you may get to see salps on the sand.

In 1920, Scottish herring fishing ships failed to get to the North Sea due to a large population of salps in the area which blocked their path!

How long can a chain of salps get?

A salp chain is part of its life cycle, and each salp in the chain is an individual that keeps growing in size and sexually reproducing within the chain. A giant salp chain was found in the Andaman Sea near Thailand, and it was 15 ft (4.5 m) long!

Do salps get tired?

Salps have an unlimited supply of food due to the abundance of phytoplankton blooms, and salps never get tired because they continuously search for food for energy. Salp plankton can be seen swimming up to the water surface to feed, and when the sun rises, they descend back down to avoid predators.

Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly animal facts for everyone to discover! Learn more about some other arthropods including peacock mantis shrimp or jellyfish.

You can even occupy yourself at home by drawing one on our salp coloring pages.