typhlonectes:Meet the Sea Slugs That Chop Off Their Heads and Grow New BodiesTheir severed heads get
typhlonectes:Meet the Sea Slugs That Chop Off Their Heads and Grow New BodiesTheir severed heads get around just fine until they regenerate perfectly functioning, parasite-free new bodies, scientists say.A few years ago, Sayaka Mitoh, a Ph.D. candidate at Nara Women’s University in Japan, was perusing her lab’s vast collection of sea slugs when she stumbled upon a gruesome sight. One of the lab’s captive-raised sea slugs, an Elysia marginata, had somehow been decapitated.When Ms. Mitoh peered into its tank to get a better look, she noticed something even more shocking: The severed head of the creature was moving around the tank, munching algae as if there was nothing unusual about being a bodiless slug.Ms. Mitoh also saw signs that the sea slug’s wound was self-inflicted: It was as if the sea slug had dissolved the tissue around its neck and ripped its own head off. Self-amputation, known as autotomy, isn’t uncommon in the animal kingdom. Having the ability to jettison a body part, such as a tail, helps many animals avoid predation. However, no animal had ever been observed ditching its entire body…Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/science/decapitated-sea-slugs.html -- source link