Here we have an animal that you probably do not know was an animal - but it was, once, before it was rendered into something that stares at you from a shelf in your bathroom. Mind you, the replacement, a synthetic sponge, also has ethical problems, because they contain polyester, etc, which release microplastics and nanoplastics, both during use, and after it is discarded, if it is not discarded in the proper way.
There is a way to sponge with impunity though, and that is to find one which is made of vegetable cellulose. And they go straight in your garden compost bin and safely biodegrade. They are not cheap, but they are kinder to the planet.
Returning to the animal sponge, they have been around for many centuries, and some of them can trace their origins back six hundred million years. They are divided into four groups, the largest of which covers ninety per cent of all known sponges, and which gives the class its name, for they are "Demospongiae". They have a soft covering but are hard inside, which is how they get their name, "half sponge". They grow quite slowly, and can live for a thousand years if left to their own devices. The other groups are the glass sponges, so named because they are either clear, or white, resembling frosted glass - the cellular sponges, which have patterns across them - and the encrusted or worm sponges, which some people say look like a brain, for it is a round shape with what look like either furrows and growths, or like long worms crawling over a mound.
They are not corals, but you can often find sponges on coral reefs, because they do like to root themselves to something. Also they eat the plankton and small creatures which float about a reef looking for even smaller food than they.
Now I have to warn you that this set is not very pleasant, and the treasures that are depicted are pretty much us using some poor creature for a purpose other than allowing it to live. The cards comprise, in the French version
- Capture des Tortues dans L`Amerique du Sud (capturing turtles in South America)
- La Crevette, Peche des Crevettes (the crab - crab fishermen)
- La Perle, Les Plongeurs (The pearl - pearl divers)
- Le Corail, Banc des Corail (Coral - a Coral Reef)
- L`eponge, La Peche dans la mer Adriatique (The sponge - Adriatic fishemen)
- L`huitre, La Peche (The oyster - fishermen)
It is also available in Italian, as "I Tresori Del Mare"