What is this green crawling creature?
Some type of Nudibranch?
ETA: Yep.
Wow. I want to know too.
My first guess but nudibranches are just hallucinatory slugs, they don’t have legs or mouths like that. Do they?
Thank you! Now it needs to get bigafied and star in a SyFy Channel movie.
Nah, SyFy doesn’t go for the nudi shows.
The OP definitely needs to dehumidify his basement.
Apparently they mostly have tentacles. And also I assume Cthulhu can’t be too far behind.
Here’s a similar one, identified as Melibe viridis. Here’s another video with more information. Melibe has an expandable “oral hood” used to engulf prey.
The appendages on the back are not limbs, but structures found in nudibranchs called cerata. In some nudibranchs they function in respiration or digestion, butin this genus they are capable of undergoing autotomy (like the tails of some lizards), being shed as a predator distraction defense.
This is either incredibly cute if it’s 1cm long, or incredibly terrifying if it’s 1m long.
Per Wiki, it reaches a length of 140 mm, or 5.5 inches, so not that terrifying if you don’t happen to be a clam worm.
This is why I want to wash my broccoli.
As an undergrad I worked in a neurophysiology lab that studied Hermissenda crassicornis photoreceptors and learning. I “trained” the animals to avoid light, then removed their central ganglia and recorded photoreceptor action potentials.
They are cool little animals.
Did they not resent this?
Not after the fact.
Were they still cool little animals after being lobotomized?
WE are NOT skipping over the rough sex part for the squeamish -
“…And for a nudibranch, that can involve amputating a disposable penis or stabbing its mates in the brain with genital darts…”
Actually, they were beyond lobotomized, their “brains” were actually removed. A surgical blade was used to decapitate the animal and the body discarded. Under a dissecting microscope the head was pinned to agar in a dish. The prep was then soaked in a protease solution. Following a rinse with seawater, only the brain and photoreceptors remained.
I wasn’t sure if that was underwater or on land until I saw the youtube video. It’s a lot more terrifying if you think it’s on land.
So, how do we know that we’re not just a Nudibranch brain in a beaker being electronically stimulated to think we’re humans in a normal existence?