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Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
bogleech
bogleech

I generally suspect everyone who follows me might know but I better check:


do you know what sort of animal a barnacle is?

a crustacean bug like a crab

a mollusk like a oyster

coral kind of thing

no idea never thought about it

they're animals?!?

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bogleech

OH NO 😭😭😭 more than 0 people didn't know 😢😱

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Barnacle is a crustacean bug shrimp guy & gal (has ovaries and also longest proportionate penis in whole animal kingdom) living on their back inside themself

Filter feeders just like mussels and sponges and corals but these are Arthropods called cirripedes (hair legs) because their legs are hairy for catching the plankton. Living in soup and eating the soup with their feet forever

bogleech

I actually did think the right answer would be like a 90% lead or more, poor barnacles 😢

These are the life cycle stages!!

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Also very important:

They are NOT PARASITES!

Parasitic barnacles exist, but you'd generally never recognize most of them as barnacles. The barnacles that grow on whales and turtles and crabs are just chilling there, eating plankton, causing no damage or drawing any energy from their ride. It also ALWAYS DOES MORE HARM THAN GOOD FOR A HUMAN TO SCRAPE THEM OFF! DONT DO IT!! 😢

If a sea turtle feels bothered by barnacle overgrowth it actually just migrates to colder or warmer waters and the shift will kill the barnacles. Crabs and lobsters discard them with regular molting, and whales don't notice them at all. Other animals like fish and squid are too soft, move too constantly or have slime coats that barnacles find inhospitable.

Barnacles have been encrusting everything in the ocean for millions of years, the things living there with them inherently evolved around handling it just fine!

If you're amazed to learn they're arthropods I hope you've also taken a moment to appreciate that these are related animals:

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In fact, we now know that insects are a direct offshoot rather than mere cousins of crustaceans, much like the revelation that birds are literally dinosaurs.

brine-pool-body
iamthekaijuking
Long presumed to have no heads at all, starfish may be nothing but
For centuries, naturalists have puzzled over what might constitute the head of a sea star, commonly called a "starfish." When looking at a w
phys.org

This just in, starfish are a radially symmetrical head with a stomach.

God I love echinoderms

If you told someone that there’s an entire group of animals that develop butt first as embryos are born bilateral but then grow a radially symmetrical head like a cancer in their side that then bursts out and lives as a completely separate organism from its birth form and moves via hydraulic systems…

They wouldn’t believe you. Yet one of the most beloved cartoon characters is one of them.

science-soup

I asked my professor about this today and he legit told me he's friends with the guy who did the study. Also he recommended this video to me:

So if you want to understand what this study means and want it explained to you in simple terms, there ya go!