Review 2 – Nudibranchs
These little guys spend most of their time between 5-10m underwater, lining the coasts all over the world including our very own.
If you’ve met a diver before, you’ve probably heard of the Nudibranch. At this point it’s almost like a real life pokemon game, minus the battling. Catching a sight of one you haven’t see before does indeed instil the same excitement you’d find catching a new pokemon, and as a avid pokémon fan (as i’m sure my mother can attest) I can confirm this. Don’t get me wrong though, Nudibranchs aren’t all about looks. In fact, part of their unique charm comes from their insane biology.
From the jump these little molluscs are full of surprises, essentially being a kind of (kind of being key here) “unsnailed” snail. They also carry a fairly abundant trait in the animal and plant kingdom, being hermaphrodites. In fact, Nudibranchs have evolved to, I shit you not, fence with their potential mate using their OWN GENITALS. This isn’t just to make them even more absurd, it’s so they can figure out who’s going to be “on top”. Try this out and see where it gets you.
Not only do they have to battle using their special equipment every time they wanna get down n dirty, they also have to breathe out of their ass. Literally, their special gills (that look strikingly similar to a feather boa) are lovingly positioned right around their anus – just as God intended I’m sure.
Overall, I would 100% recommend a dive even just to catch a sight of these amazing creatures.
10/10 Absolute unit of a mollusc
That last one is posing with its eggs btw