Barnacles are a lot less stable than you might think

Barnacles: You might know them mainly as a type of attack on boats, rocks, or marine creatures like sea turtles. Barnacles are looking for a place where a lot of water flows and fixing themselves there with some kind of layer of cement, never changing their place again. At least that’s what we thought for a long time.

Barnacles are a lot less stable than you might think

An American marine biologist read about an observation where a certain type of barnacle moved. Fascinated by this surprising discovery, he continued his research and it turned out that not only can these barnacles move, but they also do it with an idea. Deliberately moves to a place where the chance of finding food is greater. In the case of the sea turtle, the barnacles move toward the head of the turtle against the current, as more food passes into the barnacles and the animal has to do less on its own.

By the way, barnacles do not go very fast: they move about 80 mm per year. It remains to be explored exactly how they move without falling off their host.

paper: Five hundred million years of movement: directed movement and its ecological function in the barnacle turtle.

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Megan Vasquez

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