Sea Hare: Mega slug with dangerous chemicals. Surprisingly, this big guy has only 20,000 neurons (7 photos)

Why was the megaslug called a bunny? I don't have an answer to this question. They don't look alike at all! The land hare is a normal and adequate animal. Mammals corresponding to their time and place in the ecosystem. But its nautical namesake is a unique combination of technological gadgets and primitive simplicity!





I don’t know what you’re thinking, but this is the sea equivalent of a land hare.

Like most mind-blowing things, this miracle of evolutionary engineering has chosen the World Ocean as its home. Because of this, we cannot even roughly outline the boundaries of the hare’s range. Most often it is found at the latitude of Brazil, somewhat less often in the possessions of the British crown. And this despite the fact that a giant slug is not the most agile creature. How did the mollusk spread so widely?



Who the hell knows. The animals managed not only to spread over half of the globe, but also to devour the respectable grouse. The average dimensions of an adult mollusk are half a meter in length and 4-6 kilograms of mucus mass. Well, the record is a meter in length and 16 kilos in weight! This is not a cowardly little gray bunny, anyone would be afraid of such a slanted one.





But this animal can also swim! Its leg (the muscle responsible for movement) forms long outgrowths that the sea hare flaps, like a bird flaps its wings. He swims slowly and clumsily, but our hero does not pretend to be “Miss Grace”. Even such abilities are enough to evade predators. And all because the sea bunny is not a defenseless coward. He developed an underwater equivalent of a smoke grenade!



A sea hare that can fly. If you don't know what you're talking about, this sentence sounds like the ravings of a madman.

The mollusk spits ink at the predator. They completely absorb light, so it is impossible to see beyond your nose in a cloud. But this was not enough for the bunny - he added substances to the mixture that dampen the sense of smell and irritate the mucous membranes. The predator cannot see the hare, cannot smell it. The only thing he feels is hellish pain!



Ink is not always black. Sometimes they are purple-pink.

And this ink... Delicious! They are rich in amino acids. So the particularly stupid meat eaters will start eating water while the bunny calmly flies away on her wings.



By the way, the hare eats grass, like ordinary hares. Namely, algae. What can I say? Bon appetit, bunny!

But everything becomes even more amazing if you look at the inner world of the bunny. He is absolutely not rich. In particular, on neurons. His nervous system consists of 20,000 cells! Yes, there are more of them in my finger! At the same time, the mental abilities and functionality of the mollusk are by no means less than those of its relatives. This is probably because their nerve cells are very large. With a diameter of 1 mm they are visible to the naked eye!



Yes, the sea hare has few nerve cells, but they are assembled into elegant and rational neural networks, so the animal’s intellectual level is incredibly high. Compared to my finger, of course.

My rating for the sea hare: 11 hares out of 10. The mollusk is not at all like land fluffies. He can “fly”, acquired a cool neural network and armed himself with chemical lotions to scare away predators. He is better.