ASK CLAUDIO - DISCOVER THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE SCENES
Learn more about the wacky world of underwater marine sex with GREEN PORNO's marine biologist, Dr. Claudio Campagna!
CLICK ON AN ANIMAL TO LEARN MORE:
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THE RIGHT TOOL FOR THE JOB
Picture an organism that lives glued forever to one surface. An organism with no head that rhythmically moves feathery legs (cirri) up in the air to trap food and then bring it to a mouth located inside a six-platted armor. Now imagine you are a male of such a creature that has to reach a neighboring female, ready to reproduce with you. You cannot walk to her and pay her a visit, or vice versa. Yet natural selection will not pardon your limitations. You either succeed or you and your species are history (not that you have to care about the species). The problem is solved: you do not need to be there "in person," just reach her with your 8-inch long penis - the largest penis to body size ratio of the animal kingdom (considering you may be less than an inch long, wide or tall). All of the above is possible when you are a barnacle. No wonder why Darwin spent years of his valuable life studying these creatures!
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NOT YOUR BEST FRIEND
As there are many species of barnacles, there is opportunity for eccentricities: most live along the coast, even exposed to the air part of the day, but some live at 600 m (almost 2000 ft) of depth. Most are sessile, but some are parasites and damage their hosts. Parasitic species are common and require an expert to identify the barnacle, as the adult does not resemble the image described above at all. . Sessile means that they are cemented to a substrate, either by the shell (encrusters) or by a peduncle that resembles the long neck of a goose. A "substrate" for a barnacle can be a rock, a floating piece of wood, a harbor pillar or the hull of a vessel, but it can also be a whale, a turtle or even an elephant seal.
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WORLD TRAVELERS
Immobile as barnacles are themselves, some may travel around the world. Here can be so many attached to the underside of a boat that they can actually slow down the speed of a large vessel - a great example of "power to the people."
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SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST
Life is hard out there, and barnacles compete for space with other counterparts, and also with limpets. Only growing fast, or colonizing a place as a group (the Mormon effect), allows them to outdo competitors. They are also good food for predators...us among them. Some barnacles grow large; Chileans love these ones and call them "picorocos"... another eccentricity.
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A WHOLE SAC OF OPTIONS
The norm for most barnacles is to be a simultaneous hermaphrodite, thus having a long penis is somewhat undermined. Even worse: it seems they can self-fertilize if necessary. But some species have males and females in different bodies; females being large and males being minute... "complemental" these are called. These dwarf males enter the armor of the female and live there, transformed into a sac of sperm.
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GOLIATHS OF THE SEA
Once sexual mating occurs, eggs are released, and hatch into a Cyclops-like nauplius larvae (basically an eye that swims). The larva molts into another morph with a strange architecture, which is called the cyprid stage. Finally, this poor little dot of dust in the plankton finds a place to glue itself, and suffers one last metamorphosis into an adult. Most likely, Kafka had never heard about barnacles - quite a paradox.
