Urchin Spines Starting To Fork

[Donya]

I have had a Eucidaris metularia urchin for a couple years I think, can't remember exactly when I got it. All has been well with it in the time I've had it, but this week, two of the new spines coming in (to replace old mucky ones that were quite worn down) have forked. The forking of the new spines must have happened just in the last few days, since I had given it a good looking over on the weekend and there was nothing unusual going on. I've never seen a pancil-type urchin with forking spines before.

Can any urchin people enlighten me on what might be going on to cause this abnormal, forking spine growth? Injury to the growing spines perhaps?

 

[SkiFletch]

For real? Never seen or heard of that one before

You sure do come up with some unique problems Donya

 

[Donya]

I'll try to catch the urchin when it's out and about again and not hiding in its favorite hole in the rocks. I just got the batteries for my camera recharged today, so hopefully I can prove I'm not hallucinating.

 

[Donya]

Proof that I am not hallucinating! Well sort of...darn thing made it as hard as possible to get the forked spines into view. It kept wiggling one of the forked spines and a larger one above it so that it was hard to get a non-overlapping view.

The lower spine that it's trying to cover up is the larger of the forked spines. I couldn't get it to show the other one long enough for me to get a shot.

 

[zephi]

I don't think its anything to be too concerned about. Although I've never heard of anything like this before.
Anyway, nice looking specimen.

 

[SkiFletch]

Agreed, it does look healthy otherwise.

 

[Donya]

Good to know that others don't find it worrisome. If it was only one spine I'd have put it up to random chance, but when I saw the second one it weirded me out a bit since it seemed like something that should be low probability in occurrence. The little guy is as active as ever (can hear the rocks being nibbled on almost every night) so I'll just see how the strange spines go.