POISEN URCHIN - INDONESIA - BANDA SEA----------------------With the seductive beauty of a Mardi Gras parade in Venice, the center of this poisonous urchin has a lovely iridescence that belies a forest of poisonous spines to welcome the unwary. The spines of urchins are quite brittle and when impaled by one or more the spines break up and are difficult if not impossible to remove. They will continue to fester and infect for quite some time if not surgically removed. I once ran one up the edge of my finger nail, it took three years to completely heal. The bulb near the center of this image is the urchins stomach, which it inflates like a balloon to collect food particles from the passing currents, it will retract this to feed.