the.com/sea slug
A snail that gave up its shell and leaned hard into looking fabulous instead.
means A soft-bodied marine mollusk, related to snails, that lost its shell over evolutionary time and often displays bright colors or frilly appendages instead.
from Straightforward English compounding — 'sea' plus 'slug,' the latter from Middle English for a slow-moving, sluggish creature, likely tied to 'sluggard.' Sea slugs were named by simple analogy to their shelled land cousins, the slugs that strip gardens bare, even though the two are only loosely related within the larger mollusk family. The resemblance is really just shared shell-lessness and unhurried locomotion, not close kinship.
- stolen weapons
- some eat jellyfish and repurpose their stinging cells
- solar powered
- a few species photosynthesize using stolen algae chloroplasts
- self surgery
- certain species decapitate themselves and regrow a whole new body
- color warning
- bright patterns often advertise toxicity, not just vanity