THE NAME OF THE GAME IS CONFUSION

by Nancy Sefton

A geoduck is not a duck. A starfish is not a fish. A wolf eel is not an eel.

Some popular names for nature's critters are so badly chosen that it seems as though someone, way back when, was gleefully trying to confuse us non-zoologists about who's who in the animal kingdom.

Most people already know that a starfish is anything but a fish. A fish, after all, has a head and tail, eyes and fins, and is pretty mobile. A "sea star" (let's straighten things out starting here, and give the creature a proper name) has none of these, and, in fact, just sits around most of the time like a lump on a rock. Of course, it can creep slowly in anything but "hot" pursuit of a delectable bivalve like a clam or mussel, but it has to work fairly hard to do this.

Instead of moving parts like fins and tail to swim with, the sea star has thousands of tiny tube feet on its underside. These are operated by a very clever hydraulic system (invented long before we humans created the hydraulic piston). The tube feet are hollow, so the star can pump water in and out of each one, in just the right sequence so that the animal can move on what pass for little legs. So sea stars are amazingly talented in regards to motion, even if they're not fish.

Also, sea stars are invertebrate animals ("vertebrate" relates to spinal columns, "in" means "no way", "nada", "zilch", and that translates to "animal without a spinal column"). Vertebrates, animals WITH spines, of course include fish, aardvarks, platypuses, and us.

Now, to the lowly geoduck. How this huge clam which lives in the mud won the name of a free-swimming feathered creature with webbed feet is anybody's guess. "Geoclam" would be a better name, but then I wouldn't be having so much fun with this article.

The geoduck, much prized for its succulent flavors, is another invertebrate. Being a bivalve, it has the usual twin shells, hinged to open slightly when it's comfy cozy in its muddy burrow, and close like a trap door when it's disturbed. Most bi-valves extend a couple of siphons up through the mud to the surface; a simple pumping action pulls water in through one siphon, back out through the other.

Wolf eels, despite their streamlined shape, are really fish, not eels. What's the difference? Both eels and fish have spinal columns, which again, makes them vertebrates. But true eels are not found in our waters. Instead, our local "wolf eel" just happens to be a fish with a very long, snake-like body. It spends much of its time hiding in a rocky den on the bottom, more like an eel than a fish.

Fortunately most sea creatures have popular names that aren't misleading. Of course, one can always avoid any doubt by using a species' Latin name; but "sea urchin" is so much easier to say than "Strongylocentrotus franciscanus"!