My niece, who was fortunate enough to visit England recently, brought my son a Sea Hare. The tag says “Hi, I am a Sea Hare. Scientists call me Aplysia. I am proud to be an important part of nerve research. My research helps to understand epilepsy, why chemicals in our environment affect learning and memory, and how our nerves talk to each other.”
I must be dense. Can someone explain this?
Is a sea hare a real thing?
It’s cute as hell, either way…
It’s a genus of sea slug. Neurologists use them to study the nervous system.
I assume the Sea Hare your niece purchased was a stuffed animal of some kind, then; the real ones aren’t nearly so cuddly. They’re a kind of mollusc like a sea slug, only free-swimming. We’ve got them all over the place down here in Florida, anyway; I believe they eat seaweed. The reason they’re called sea hares is on account of two little protrusions that poke out of its cranial end, and which I suppose could be seen as rabbit ears if you’re drunk or deranged. They’re interesting critters, although to me they look more like some kind of fleshy undersea bat or something. Dunno much about the medical research angle, but I can tell you that they squirt ink if you handle them roughly, which I would guess the plush version doesn’t do. They are also hermaphroditic, but I’m not surprised that the tag didn’t feature that particular bit of information either.
Here’s a photo:
http://troyb.com/photo/images/fullsize/027-04-SpottedSeaHare.jpg
They vary in size, but the ones I’ve seen ( not the same species as the one above ) were perhaps just a little smaller than a football. I find them to be kind of pleasant critters, actually - But then I like sea slugs generally, so go figure :).
Am I the only person wondering why a talking mollasc is explaining the Wonders of Medical Research to little kids and why it is fun to be experimented upon?
This one doesn’t talk. Was I ripped off?
I was just curious about the connection between the research and the whatever-it-is…
They have a quite complex nervous system for an invertebrate – and developed quite differently from the chordate system. That makes them good research subjects into how neural nets work.