Editing Sea cucumber (section)

==In popular culture==
[[File:Haeckel Thuroidea.jpg|thumb|Holothurians plate by [[Ernst Haeckel]] from his ''[[Kunstformen der Natur]]'' (1904)]]
Sea cucumbers have inspired thousands of [[haiku]] in [[Japan]], where they are called ''namako'' (海鼠), written with characters that can be translated as "sea mice" (an example of [[gikun]]). In English translations of these haiku, they are usually called "sea slugs". According to the ''[[Oxford English Dictionary]]'', the English term "sea slug" was originally applied to holothuroids during the 18th century. The term is now applied to several groups of [[sea snail]]s, [[Marine (ocean)|marine]] [[gastropod]] [[mollusk]]s that have no shell or only a very reduced shell, including the [[nudibranch]]s. Almost 1,000 Japanese holothuroid haiku translated into English appear in the book ''Rise, Ye Sea Slugs!'' by [[Robin D. Gill]].<ref>Gill, RobinD.[https://books.google.com/books?id=hFWpECE_RtwC&q=rise+ye+sea+slugs ''Rise, Ye Sea Slugs!'']. Paraverse Press, 2003, {{ISBN|0-9742618-0-7}}</ref>