Sea Animals

Thematic Vocabulary Unit Nº 052 v.0.4

     General Definitions

1. aquatic animal |n| an animal, either vertebrate or invertebrate, which lives in water for most or  all of its life.
2. amphibian |n| a cold-blooded vertebrate animal of a class that comprises the frogs, toads, newts, salamanders, and caecilians, distinguished by an aquatic gill-breathing larval stage followed by a terrestrial lung-breating adult stage.
3. water |n| the liquid which forms the seas, lakes, rivers, and rain and is the basis of the fluids of living organisms.
4. fresh water |n| fresh water is naturally occurring water on the Earth's surface in ice sheets, ice caps, glaciers, bogs, ponds, lakes, rivers and streams, and underground as groundwater in aquifers and underground streams. Fresh water is generally characterized by having low concentrations of dissolved salts and other total dissolved solids.
5. sea water |n| water from the sea or ocean, that is salty.

      Some Water Animals

1. fish |n| a creature that lives in water, breathes through gills, and uses fins and a tail for swimming.
2. cephalopods |n| cephalopods are some of the most unique marine animals in the world. Species such as squids, octopuses and cuttlefish are considered cephalopods. They have tentacles and bilateral body symmetry. They also have a very prominent and abnormally large head. Not all of them can squirt ink, but many of the different species can. There are about 800 different cephalopod species in existence today.
3. crustacean |n| any chiefly aquatic arthropod of the class Crustacea, typically having the body covered with a hard shell or crust, including the lobsters, shrimps, crabs, barnacles, and wood lice.
4. marine invertebrates |n| Sponmges, Cnidarians, Worms, Lophophorates, Molluscs, Arthropods, Echinoderms, and Hemichordates are all animals that lack backbones and are known as invertebratesexternal link. Over 98% of species are invertebrates. Some invertebrate phylaexternal link have only one species, while others, like Arthropodaexternal link, include more than 83% of all described animal species with over a million species!
5. reptiles |n| include marine iguanas, sea snakes, sea turtles and saltwater crocodiles. Some marine reptiles will spend time on land, and species such as sea turtles and saltwater crocodiles return to land to lay eggs. Many sea reptiles became extinct during the Cretaceous period leaving only the few remaining species today.
6. zooplankton |n| the animal constituent of plankton, which consists mainly of small crustaceans and fish larvae.

     Fishes Body Parts

       Head

1. head |n| the head includes the snout, from the eye to the forward most point of the upper jaw, the operculum or gill cover (absent in sharks and jawless fish), and the cheek, which extends from the eye to preopercle. The operculum and preopercle may or may not have spines. In sharks and some primitive bony fish a spiracle, small extra gill opening, is found behind each eye.
2. cheeck |n| either side of the face below the eye.
3. eyes |n| fish eyes are similar to terrestrial vertebrates like birds and mammals, but have a more spherical lens. Their retinas generally have both rod cells and cone cells (for scotopic and photopic vision), and most species have colour vision. Some fish can see ultraviolet and some can see polarized light. 
4. jaw |n| the bones of the skull that frame the mouth and serve to open it, the bones that hold the teeth.
5. nostril |n| the nostrils of fish do not open into the back of the mouth and are not  used for breathing. They actually lead into organs of smell which are  very sensitive, so that a fish can detect the presence of food in the  water at considerable distances.
6. snout |n| the projecting nose and mouth of an animal.
7. spiracle |n| in some fish such as sharks, a small hole behind each eye used for breathing, by allowing water through to the gills.

       Body

1. gills |n| respiratory organ of aquatic animals that breathe oxygen dissolved in water.
2. skin |n| the thin layer of tissue forming the natural outer covering of the body of a person or animal.
3. scales |n| each of the small overlapping horny or bony plates protecting the skin of fish.
4. lateral line |n| a sense organ used to detect movement and vibration in the surrounding water. For example, fish can use their lateral line system to follow the vortices produced by fleeing prey. In most species, it consists of a line of receptors running along each side of the fish.
5. photophores |n| are light-emitting organs which appears as luminous spots on some fishes. The light can be produced from compounds during the digestion of prey, from specialized mitochondrial cells in the organism called photocytes, or associated with symbiotic bacteria, and are used for attracting food or confusing predators.
6. fins |n| fins are the most distinctive features of fish. They are either composed of bony spines protruding from the body with skin covering them and joining them together, either in a webbed fashion as seen in most bony fish, or are similar to a flipper, as seen in sharks.

Visual Vocabulary Gallery

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5. Insects
6. Insects (visual)
7. Sea Animals (visual)

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