A lot of us probably have sand dollars in our beach colelctions, but have you ever witnessed a live one?
Reader Erika O. came across a living sand dollar (or sea cookie or snapper biscuit in New Zealand, or pansy shell in South Africa) on the shore of Ocean Beach this week. Watch the video to see it in motion!
Sarah B.
Very cool!
Very cool video! On Coastwalk on Tuesday morning, we didn’t pick the live sand dollars up long enough to watch/notice the hairs moving, however we saw many tracks (the width of their respective sand dollars) indicating they traveled several inches to several feet during low tide, and some had burrowed themselves into the sand at a bit of an angle; dollops of sand on their top side.
Quite a number of sand dollars had a single big barnacle on their backs, on the “short” side of the sand pattern (as if there is some directionality that the sand dollars and barnacles know about that we couldn’t quite figure out).
When you look closely at live one, it’s like the whole sand dollar is vibrating. Nature is amazing!