Classroom lesson · Animal Flower Cave · 🇧🇧 Barbados

Animal Flower Cave

Sea anemones and ocean windows at the very tip of Barbados

Natural rock windows looking out to the Atlantic from inside Animal Flower Cave, Barbados

Photo · Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc.

What is it?

Animal Flower Cave is a sea cave perched right at the northern tip of Barbados, at the top of dramatic cliffs. Inside the cave, natural windows carved by the sea give you breathtaking views of the crashing Atlantic Ocean. The cave gets its unusual name from the tiny sea anemones that live in the rock pools inside — early visitors thought they looked like little flowers.

Tell me more

The cave was formed over thousands of years as waves battered the cliff base and slowly hollowed out the rock. The 'windows' — open holes in the cave wall — let you look straight out to sea, with waves surging and foaming below. On a rough day the spray shoots right through the windows.

Sea anemones are actually animals, not plants, even though they look like flowers swaying in the water. They have soft, colourful tentacles they use to catch tiny pieces of food drifting past. Visitors to Animal Flower Cave can sometimes spot them in the shallow rock pools on the cave floor.

The cave sits at a place called North Point, the northernmost tip of the island. From the clifftop above you can see for miles along the rugged Atlantic coastline in both directions. It is a wonderfully wild and peaceful spot.

In the classroom

Walk your class through this in 15 minutes.

Talk together

Discussion prompts

  1. 01Sea anemones look like flowers but are actually animals. Can you think of other living things that look like something completely different?
  2. 02What would it feel like to stand inside a cave and look out through a natural rock window at the sea?
  3. 03How do you think scientists figured out that sea anemones are animals, not plants?
Try this

Classroom activity

Draw a cross-section of Animal Flower Cave from the side. Show the cliff, the cave inside, one of the sea windows, and a sea anemone in a rock pool. Label each part. Then write a three-sentence postcard as if you are standing inside the cave right now.