Although sponges don\u2019t move anywhere, they\u2019re much more fascinating than the soggy lumps we know from our bathrooms.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Firstly, these animals are ancient. Researchers believe sponges were one of the earliest animals on the planet, potentially appearing more than\u00a0608 million<\/a>\u00a0years ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n This figure has been a cause of contention for scientists because most of today\u2019s sponges have a skeleton made up of tiny, needle-like structures called spicules. If you look back through the fossil record, you won\u2019t find spicules beyond around 543 million years ago. It seems to track that sponges didn\u2019t exist before this time.\u00a0<\/p>\n But\u00a0genetic information<\/a>\u00a0suggests that sponges have been around for more like 700 million years.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe first sponges were soft-bodied and lacked mineralised skeletons,\u201d explains\u00a0Eleonora Rossi<\/a>, honorary research associate at the University of Bristol\u2019s\u00a0School of Biological Sciences<\/a>. Her\u00a0paper<\/a>\u00a0suggests that sponges evolved\u00a0100 million years<\/a>\u00a0before the fossil record. \u201cThat\u2019s why we don\u2019t see sponge spicules in rocks from around 600 million years ago \u2014 there simply weren\u2019t any to preserve.\u201d<\/p>\n This means there were sponges in our seas hundreds of millions of years before the dinosaurs existed. Back then, the ocean was a very different place with lower oxygen levels \u2013 something that doesn\u2019t bother sponges too much.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAlthough, like other animals, they require oxygen to metabolise, they don\u2019t need much because they are not very active,\u201d explains\u00a0Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History<\/a>\u00a0on its website.\u00a0<\/p>\n Scientists think there are around\u00a015,000 different species<\/a>\u00a0of sponges on the planet, only half of which have been described \u2013 meaning there are thousands of different sponges yet to be discovered.\u00a0<\/p>\n There are many weird and wonderful sponges researchers already know about. There\u2019s the harp sponge (Chondrocladia lyra) which is found thousands of metres deep and\u00a0looks like a toast rack<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0\u2018death ball\u2019 sponge<\/a>\u00a0that looks like a bundle of pretty pink ping pong balls hanging from a tiny coat stand.\u00a0<\/p>\n Deep-sea scientists in the Pacific Ocean were amazed when they stumbled upon a\u00a0Dr Seuss-like landscape<\/a>\u00a0of synchronised sponges on sticks all facing in the same direction. The scene looked so strange researchers dubbed it the \u201cforest of the weird.\u201d<\/p>\n The biggest known sponge in the world is an ancient glass sponge<\/a> that researchers found in 2015 in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii. It\u2019s\u00a0the size of a car<\/a>: around 3.5 metres long, 2m high and 1.5m wide. It may have been on the planet for thousands of years.\u00a0<\/p>\n The\u00a0longest-lived<\/a>\u00a0species \u2013 the giant volcano sponge (Scolymastra joubini) \u2013 is even more impressive. It can live for around 15,000 years and may even reach 23,000 years old.<\/p>\n Even the so-called\u00a0boring sponge<\/a>\u00a0is pretty interesting. This species (Cliona spp.) gets its name from its tendency to bore holes through hard surfaces made of calcium carbonate, such as coral skeletons and oyster shells.\u00a0<\/p>\n Like\u00a0corals<\/a>, sponges\u00a0spawn<\/a>\u00a0by releasing eggs and sperm into the water column. As algae, they swim through the water looking for the perfect place to live (they\u2019d best choose a good spot as, once they\u2019re settled, that\u2019s it for life). Once attached to a hard surface, they remain there and cannot move. These invertebrates don\u2019t have a brain, organs or a nervous system.\u00a0<\/p>\n One of their most remarkable skills is the ability to reform after being broken apart. \u201cSponges are the only animals that if broken down to the level of their cells, can reassemble themselves,\u201d writes the\u00a0National Museum of Ireland<\/a>\u00a0on its website. \u201cExperiments have shown that a sponge can survive after being passed through a fine cloth to break apart its individual cells.\u201d<\/p>\n They can be disassembled for short periods and still find their way back together. \u201cWhen left in seawater over a few days, the cells still recognise each other and begin to come together again, reforming into a functional sponge and the original cells return to their respective functions,\u201d they add. \u201cIf cells of two different species are mixed, they sort themselves out and reform individuals of each separate species. This process is known as reaggregation.\u201d Talk about masters of reinvention!\u00a0<\/p>\n Sponges feed by taking in water and filtering out bacteria, plankton and organic material. This helps to keep the water clean and marine ecosystems healthy. \u201cShe sponges filter water, collect bacteria, and process carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus,\u201d explains\u00a0NOAA\u2019s National Ocean Service<\/a>\u00a0on its website. \u201cIn nutrient-depleted coral reefs, some sponge species are thought to make carbon biologically available by excreting a form of \u201csponge poop\u201d that other organisms feed on, thereby fuelling productivity throughout the ecosystem.\u201d<\/p>\n top image: Barrel sponge at the reef bottom. Credit: Aleksei Permiakov\/ Getty Images<\/p>\n More wildlife stories from around the world:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are ancient animals in the ocean that can live for hundreds of years, have no organs and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":861756,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[79,201],"class_list":["post-861755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=861755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/861756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=861755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=861755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=861755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Expn7372_39695069932.jpg\")
Harp sponge. Credit: NOAA Photo Library, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Siphonodictyon_coralliphagum.jpg\")
Variable Boring Sponge. Credit: iNaturalist user: thibaudaronson, CC BY-SA 4.0 https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.<\/p>\n