Many of you might have already seen the ultra cute "sea sheep" (Costasiella kuroshimae), but yesterday I learned 2 mind-blowing facts about the family of sea slugs they belong to:

@mina

cut off ... their *heads*!? 🤯

Many of you might have already seen the ultra cute "sea sheep" (Costasiella kuroshimae), but yesterday I learned 2 mind-blowing facts about the family of sea slugs they belong to:

1. They incorporate chloroplasts (the organelles in plant cells that do the actual photosynthesis) of plants they eat, into their own bodies to do photosynthesis directly for them (that is the green colour you see), in order to survive if food is scarce.

Imagine being able to live from light!

1/2

#WondersOfNature

@quincy @mina yep. Also jellyfish have a brain when they’re larvae, and then when they grow up they don’t need it anymore and eat it.

@mina@berlin.social Didn't know I could be more in love with them, but here we are

Many of you might have already seen the ultra cute "sea sheep" (Costasiella kuroshimae), but yesterday I learned 2 mind-blowing facts about the family of sea slugs they belong to:

1. They incorporate chloroplasts (the organelles in plant cells that do the actual photosynthesis) of plants they eat, into their own bodies to do photosynthesis directly for them (that is the green colour you see), in order to survive if food is scarce.

Imagine being able to live from light!

1/2

#WondersOfNature

@mina amazing!

Many of you might have already seen the ultra cute "sea sheep" (Costasiella kuroshimae), but yesterday I learned 2 mind-blowing facts about the family of sea slugs they belong to:

1. They incorporate chloroplasts (the organelles in plant cells that do the actual photosynthesis) of plants they eat, into their own bodies to do photosynthesis directly for them (that is the green colour you see), in order to survive if food is scarce.

Imagine being able to live from light!

1/2

#WondersOfNature

@mina And the badass award goes to Costasiella kuroshimae!

Many of you might have already seen the ultra cute "sea sheep" (Costasiella kuroshimae), but yesterday I learned 2 mind-blowing facts about the family of sea slugs they belong to:

1. They incorporate chloroplasts (the organelles in plant cells that do the actual photosynthesis) of plants they eat, into their own bodies to do photosynthesis directly for them (that is the green colour you see), in order to survive if food is scarce.

Imagine being able to live from light!

1/2

#WondersOfNature

@quincy @theVedek @mina, disagree: they both would be clones of the original one, which ceases to exist at the moment of separation. Same as with the cells.

@volemo @quincy @theVedek @mina

The slug of Theseus…

@mina@berlin.social
This is the product of evolution, it developed from something less elaborate. How could it turn out THAT cute? How can cuteness be an evolutionary advantage?
Yes, life finds a way

Maybe i'll declare this as my new #god

2. This allows some of these slugs to do a trick, no other animal can do.

If they get sick or damaged, they're able to cut off their heads, leaving the body with heart and digestive system behind and to regrow a whole body within a couple of days.

Whilst they do it, they live from photosynthesis alone (no digestive system), but how they manage to do so without a heart, is still unknown.

2/2

source and additional info:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH_uv4h2xYM

Many of you might have already seen the ultra cute "sea sheep" (Costasiella kuroshimae), but yesterday I learned 2 mind-blowing facts about the family of sea slugs they belong to:

1. They incorporate chloroplasts (the organelles in plant cells that do the actual photosynthesis) of plants they eat, into their own bodies to do photosynthesis directly for them (that is the green colour you see), in order to survive if food is scarce.

Imagine being able to live from light!

1/2

#WondersOfNature

2. This allows some of these slugs to do a trick, no other animal can do.

If they get sick or damaged, they're able to cut off their heads, leaving the body with heart and digestive system behind and to regrow a whole body within a couple of days.

Whilst they do it, they live from photosynthesis alone (no digestive system), but how they manage to do so without a heart, is still unknown.

2/2

source and additional info:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH_uv4h2xYM

@mina
I assume their head is small enough for the cells to get enough food and oxygen by diffusion without any kind of circulatory system but it's still astonishing.

@mina

Sometime in the last decade or two. Snails became able to eat sunlight, because at the cellular level, genetic abilities were transferred. From a plant, into an animal.

Imagine still trusting gene splicing experiments like Monsanto does with automatic kill genes being added, to food crops, so third generation seeds are sterile.

Because they think genes only pass through sex. And they dont.

So Monsanto's expirements most correctly read as sci-fi novels about how the starvation began.

@mina half animal, half plant. Amazing!

@kevinrns

That's actually enormously scary.

I will have to find some more information about that. Do you have an article about that?

I mean, one you can understand without being a biologist?

@mina @quincy this is awful news. Now that this is known, the Russians will be conducting all sorts of experiments to understand how this works and how it can be applied to make Putin immortal.