8 August: Sand Dollars

It’s Dollar Day, but since I’ve done money already, here are 10 things you might not know about a different type of dollar, the sand dollar.

1. A sand dollar is a burrowing sea urchin belonging to the same family as sea cucumbers and starfish.
2. The name sand dollar comes from their skeletons, also known as a test, which often wash up on beaches after the animal dies. The test, dried and bleached white by the sun looks a bit like a large Silver coin, like an old Spanish dollar.
3. They go by other names, too, including "sand cakes" or "cake urchins". In Spanish they are called galleta de mar which translates as sea cookie. In New Zealand, they’re called snapper biscuits, and in South Africa, they’re called pansy shells, because the people there tended to think they looked like flowers rather than coins.
4. When they are alive, sand dollars are Green, Blue, violet or Purple in colour and are covered in spines which help them move around on the sea bed where they live. As well as locomotion the spines come in useful for eating. The sand dollar uses its spines to move food to its mouth, which is located in the middle of their underside.
5. While most of their diet is tiny algae, they will eat fragments of other animals so they are classified as carnivores.
6. A sand dollar’s mouth is made up of five jaws which grind up its food. It will chew its food for up to 15 minutes before swallowing it. They also digest their food very slowly – it can take as long as two days to digest a meal. When they die and you pick up their skeletons on the beach, it’s sometimes possible to hear the bones in their mouth rattle if you shake it gently. The mouthparts of a sand dollar have a name, too – Aristotle's lantern.
7. The five small jawbones make up part of the Christian mythology associated with sand dollars – they’re said to represent the doves of peace. Other symbols Christians have found in sand dollars are that its five pointed star pattern represents the star of Bethlehem, the five holes represent the five wounds of Christ on the cross and an outline of a Poinsettia plant on the underside. They are also sometimes said to be coins lost by mermaids or the people of Atlantis.
8. A sand dollar can live for up to 10 years. It’s possible to tell how old a sand dollar was when it died by counting the rings on its skeleton.
9. Sand dollar larvae can clone themselves. They might do so when there is plenty of food and conditions are favourable; but equally they do it as a way to survive when under threat. Scientists have found that they will clone themselves when exposed to the dissolved mucus of fish which eat them. The cloned larvae are half the size of the original and harder for the fish to find.
10. Several hundred of them can live in one square yard (.85 sq m) of sea floor. In still Water, they might stand up with one edge buried in the sand. When the water gets rough they will lie flat or even burrow into the sand to prevent being washed away.

Killing Me Softly

Sebastian Garrett is an assassin. It wasn’t his first choice of vocation, but nonetheless, he’s good at it, and can be relied upon to get the job done. He’s on top of his game.

Until he is contracted to kill Princess Helena of Galorvia. She is not just any princess. Sebastian doesn’t bargain on his intended victim being a super-heroine who gives as good as she gets. Only his own genetic variant power saves him from becoming the victim, instead of Helena. 

Fate has another surprise in store. Sebastian was not expecting to fall in love with her.

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