Does Singapore have anything cute and cuddly on our shores? Something that will score high on the "oooo"-meter and make you want to tickle it under its chin (if it has a chin). Cute enough to save? And to save our shores?
Here's some of my favourite cuddly shore critters. Do you have any favourites?
Babies are cute, so baby sea stars must surely be cute, right? While sea stars have no eyes and no chins, they do make up for this in arms.
And the cuddle-score rises when they are cartoonish, like these baby Knobbly sea stars (Protoreaster nodosus) on Cyrene Reef.
We've found that our Knobblies are certainly cute enough to get adopted by humans! More about Star Adoption on the Star Trackers blog.
Sea cucumbers are a little hard to love, except perhaps the little rotund and colourful ones.
Like these Warty sea cucumbers (Cercodemas anceps) sometimes found on Changi and our Northern shores. But I think we got to change the unattractive common name.
Sand dollars are actually furry! And if they're small too, they do provoke a few 'ooo's. But first, got to help ordinary people realise they are animals in the first place.
Tiny sand dollars (Arachnoides placenta) carpet areas of Tanah Merah, intermingled with the equally adorable Button snail shells (Umbonium vestiarum).
While it may be hard to hug an urchin, I do think our bunny-rabbit white sea urchin is quite cuddly.
Especially since it has an endearing habit of clutching bits of rubbish over itself. These white sea urchins (Salmacis sp.) are seasonally common on many of our Northern shores, sometimes dotting the seagrass meadows like many white furry balls.
Our feather stars or crinoids are rather too fragile to even think of touching. And while some might be bright red, most of those on the intertidal have rather more sombre colours.
But divers do see some spectacularly beautiful ones at our wild reefs.
Like these ones in ice-cream colours seen at Sisters Islands shared by Chay Hoon on her colourful clouds blog.Same problem of too many bristly arms for brittle stars. But I think this brittle star can just make into cute.
This tiny commensal brittle star found on our colourful soft corals must surely trigger off the 'ooo'-meter a little. I mean, it's small, wriggly and comes in candy colours including the kind of 'Hello-Kitty' pink that screams "cute". Right?
OK, I ran out of steam after doing these echinoderms.
I'll leave the rest to YOUR suggestions for cute :-)
