Wonders of GOD’S Creation

A foolish man builds his house on the sand—but a wise garden eel builds his house in the sand. Garden eels are born from eggs left to float freely near the water’s surface, but once they’re big enough, they swim down to the sandy seafloor and dig out a narrow little burrow to call their home.

Probably forever.

Once garden eels have excavated a burrow using their stiff tail and single long dorsal fin to remove the sand, they almost never leave it. They keep their tail anchored in it at all times, raising themselves upward to eat the zooplankton brought to them by ocean currents, but fully retreating into the burrow when threatened. They stay in their burrows even when mating. They intertwine their exposed body with that of a neighbor in the next burrow over, but leave their tail in their own burrow. Because a colony of garden eels can number in the hundreds (or even thousands), it’s easy to mistake these little Anguilliformes for a bed of seagrass.

In one of Christ’s parables, a foolish man’s house collapses when the wind and rain shift the sandy foundation beneath it (Matthew 7:24-27). Garden eels could not quickly retreat into a collapsed burrow, so God gave them a clever way to avoid a similar fate—they secrete a slimy mucus that functions like cement, reinforcing the burrow walls to prevent them from collapsing.

Pictured: spotted garden eel (Heteroconger hassi)