Sea anemone birth

A beadlet anemone gave birth to a tiny baby sea anemone at the Brighton Science Festival during the drop in session I ran - rock pooling with a microscope.

This was a tiny replica of the adult - in fact it was created by a process called budding and is a clone of the original anemone.

In the video clip above you can see the size of the 'baby' anemone compared with the size of the adult.


While I collected the other rock pool animals from the beach for the drop in session, I have had the sea anemones for sometime in an aquarium at home. (see blog post below).


Anemones are often attached to a large rock or similar - so I have kept this one at home as it is attached to a pebble - so I always have one to take to schools etc. Sea anemones are also easy to keep in a cold water marine aquarium.