Beauty is where you find it, isn’t it? In this day and age we’re taught
that beauty comes in bottles and tubes and in the form of ornate and expensive
status symbols. Mother Nature would beg – no, she would insist upon –
disagreeing. Sometimes great and astounding beauty can be found in the most
surprising places, harbored by the last creatures that you could ever suspect.
Consider the simple sea slug.
I have a relative who has a deeply embedded – and very vocal – aversion to
these little guys. Once, many summers ago, when she came across a couple of
them napping on a seaside log, she leaped sky-high and let out such a shriek
that we all still chuckle at the memory. But little did my relative realize
that those rather shapeless, featureless, squirming little brown blobs are only
one of a catalog of different kinds of slugs gracing our sea beds, and that
some of them add considerable visual pleasure to their watery homes.
Here are a few:
1. It’s kind of hard to believe Nembrotha cristata even is a sea
slug. This is a very black little animal with almost phosphorescent green spots
all over his body. He has an appendage on his back which almost resembles
little wings, though I’m sure he doesn’t get much flight time in. He gets to be
as much as 50mm in length and lights up its home in the Indo-West Pacific
Ocean. These are the waters near
Indonesia.
Well, it just goes to show that Mother Nature is always hiding another of her beautiful surprises somewhere. Sometimes she tucks it away in some of the most surprising places. But you can find it, if you’re willing to look.
Thinking back to that long ago moment on the shore when my relative let out that shriek, I wonder what she would have done if that slug had looked a shockingly pretty as these ones. Would she have shrieked and run? Or would she have leaned in for a closer look?
3. This one looks like something right
out of a kid’s fantasy video game. It’s the Glaucus
atlanticus . This bright blue slug with it’s
pointy cerata (extensions that look like fingers up and down its “arms” and “legs”),
looks like some kind of we monster, and it’s no wonder one of its nicknames is
“Blue Dragon”. It truly looks like one! More that that, he’s a bit ferocious!
He spends most of his life floating rather unambitiously on the waves, going
wherever the tide takes him, but when he washes up on shore, he’s said to be
capable of delivering quite a sting to anyone who tries to pick him up. Oh, and
one of his select dinner menu items? The venomous man-o-war jellyfish!
Well, it just goes to show that Mother Nature is always hiding another of her beautiful surprises somewhere. Sometimes she tucks it away in some of the most surprising places. But you can find it, if you’re willing to look.
Thinking back to that long ago moment on the shore when my relative let out that shriek, I wonder what she would have done if that slug had looked a shockingly pretty as these ones. Would she have shrieked and run? Or would she have leaned in for a closer look?
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