Sea Anemone : Animal or Plant?

All animal life on earth is supposed to be distantly related to plant life as per evolution. So it may be possible for some aquatic living beings to confuse scientists as they try to classify them into plants and animals. One such being is the sea anemone.

Sea anemones are classified as being animals traditionally. However two new genetic studies conducted on them have found that they are technically half plant and half animal. While no one is rushing to change their traditional classification as an animal, researchers are open to discussing their more plant like traits.

Ulrich Technau  from the University of Vienna, was the project leader of one of these genetic studies conducted on cnidarians. He say that cnidarians are from an animal lineage and include corals, sea anemones, jellyfish and hydras. They branched off very early and so have retained many plant-like ancestral traits, Ulrich said, hence, in terms of the regulation of gene expression, they are somewhat mixed.

Cnidarians appear to use a plant-like system to regulate typical animal genes, many of which are shared between the sea anemone and humans. Now it does seem like a long shot to call a sea anemone cousin, but hey, this science project shows that it just may be possible.