Ok, when I reach 200 posts, I'm going to start a Patreon so that I can afford to subscribe to things like Smithsonian, National Geographic, and Live Science, and read as much as I want. I know it'll take me a forever to actually get the money to do so, but still. And now that I've told you, I'm going to forget it and go back to finding the free articles for everyone to read and find out about the ridiculous things I'm telling you about. I say ridiculous because if I'm going to tell you about Germany's Baby Derby, I can't call this a serious information blog, even if I'm being serious that I love these things and want you to know about them.
In this particular post, I'm going to tell you about Sea Angels.
This particular picture comes from the Monterey Bay Aquarium link below, and demonstrates very well how they got this name.
These guys are actually sea snails, though they don't have shells like their cousins, the sea butterflies, do. Please don't go googling them just yet, they're on my list to tell you about later and I really want to pull out a bunch of cool pictures then too. If you can't wait, please promise to be amazed later, because they're cool.
One of the really cool and more-than-vaguely-terrifying things about them is that they're predators, and when they come across their food (which is actually, mostly, the aforementioned sea butterflies, meanies), they reach out with tentacles from their face, grab the thing, and use two hooklike arms to pull the thing out of it's shell and directly into the Angel's stomach. This can take somewhere between 2 and 45 minutes, apparently.
Again, from Monterey Bay, but this one is terrifying somehow. Thankfully, these guys are only a few inches long, so not likely to attempt to eat me like I'm still strangely afraid they will. Why is this guy scarier than sharks?
In other news, despite snails being really slow on land, these guys can actually swim pretty well. They use their wings to direct themselves and are pretty maneuverable.
This one is from the Ocean link below. These guys are so pretty. Their transparent bodies help protect them from predators, of which they have many, but we can still see a few things of their organs, which makes them look very cool. The other thing that protects them is that they actually produce a chemical that makes them not-tasty, which gives them the distinction of being the first known mollusk to actually produce their own chemical deterrent instead of getting it from their food.
Just thinking, but I probably should have done this post last month. Here's an innocent looking creature that has a hidden dark side of predatory tentacles, and I just missed turning it into a Halloween monster. Darn. I guess I'll have to start saving up for next Halloween though, because I'm going to need a list of fun things to tell you about next time, that no one else covers in detail too.
Anyway, this was nice and I'm definitely not going to be having nightmares about these adorable little murder machines, and I'll see you again soon.
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