sierraclub.org - sierra magazine - july/august 2012 - underwater-world - underwater world: strange beauties of the sea
Photography by David Hall | Captions by Della Watson
The candy stripe shrimp finds a safe haven beneath the tentacles of the crimson anemone. This living arrangement, called "commensalism," benefits the shrimp and causes no harm to the confection-colored anemone, whose beautiful tentacles are equipped with nematocysts, which sting and paralyze small marine critters. The unlucky prey are then guided into the anemone's central mouth—an opening which also expels waste and "births" larvae.