Check out the previous series here: https://gall.dcinside.com/m/snail/40050 Long time no see!! Since you guys liked the pixel art last time, I brought more +_+ It took a while because I was looking for super weird ones like in Extra Part 1. Let's get right into it.
① Gender swap based on 'Hierarchy' (Slipper Limpet / Crepidula fornicata) Category: Caenogastropoda One-line summary: Ditched all organs to literally become 'sea cucumber guts.'
Features: These guys live stacked on top of each other like a tower on rocks. The rule is mental: the one at the very bottom (the prime spot) is always female, and everyone stacked on top becomes male. If the Queen at the bottom dies? The male right above her swaps genders and takes the throne. It's a total merit-based gender society.
What the females and males look like.
② 'Bubble' Raft (Purple Snail / Janthina janthina) Category: Tech Faction One-line summary: If it pops, you're dead.
Features: Total romantics that float on the ocean surface their whole lives. While Blue Glaucus slugs float too, these guys do it while carrying a shell;; They don't have fins or anything, so they spit out mucus from their foot to make a bubble raft. If it pops or they lose their grip? They sink straight to the deep sea and die. There's a thin line between romance and death.
③ Mating that turns you into a 'Eunuch' (Banana Slug / Ariolimax) Category: Euthyneura One-line summary: The end of mating is becoming a eunuch(?)
Features: Massive yellow slugs over 20cm long... and this part is shocking. After mating, if the penis is too big and gets stuck, the partner (or the slug itself) just bites it off. Once you share the love, you're forced to give up the bro-life and live only as a female. ㄷㄷ Usually, the loser of the 'struggle' turns female. [Part 2] Shocking Hunting & Survival - Weapons beyond common sense
④ The Birth of a 'Vampire' (Vampire Nutmeg Snail / Cancellaria cooperi) Category: Tech Faction One-line summary: Can you imagine a snail sucking blood?
Features: This is the guy I teased in the Part 4 preview. It hides in the sand, and when an electric ray falls asleep, it sneaks up, stabs a long proboscis into a blood vessel, and slurps up fresh blood. The only vampire among gastropods...
⑤ The Birth of a 'Berserker' (Ezohelix gainesi) Category: Revolutionary Faction One-line summary: The Ma Dong-seok (Don Lee) of snails who uses armor as a blunt weapon.
https://youtu.be/Z6wBcBB5Avg Features: Usually, snails hide in their shells, right? Not this guy. If a predatory beetle attacks, it swings its body! It whips its shell around like a mace and knocks the beetle away. Pure badassery for fighting back instead of hiding ㄷ
⑥ The Hipster in a Bamboo Hat (Umbrella Snail / Umbraculum umbraculum) Category: Revolutionary Faction (Umbraculida) One-line summary: The shell is just a 'fashion item' you wear.
Features: The body is huge at 20cm, but the shell is flat and tiny as a pebble. Defense is basically 0, but it carries the shell on its head like a little hat. The fact that its scientific name is literally 'Umbrella' (Umbraculum) is the funniest part lol.
[Part 3] Bizarre Visuals & Abilities - Is this even a living thing?
⑦ The 'Glowing' Shell (Clusterwink Snail / Hinea brasiliana) Category: Tech Faction One-line summary: A bio-LED that uses its shell like an amplifier.
Features: When it feels threatened, it emits light, but it’s not just any glow. It diffuses the light through its opaque shell so the whole thing flashes like a green lightbulb. It flees while the predator is blinded going 'Argh, my eyes!'
⑧ The Birth of a 'Phoenix' (Elysia cf. marginata) Category: Revolutionary Faction One-line summary: Even if its head is cut off, it grows back. (The god of regeneration)
https://youtu.be/aPKgwEOCywE Features: When they get old or sick, they cut their own heads off (Autotomy). The severed head stays alive by photosynthesizing using chloroplasts stolen from algae, and in just 3 weeks, it regrows an entire body including the heart and organs.
⑨ 'Stinging Noodles' (Phyllodesmium) Category: Euthyneura One-line summary: Is this a creature or a bowl of noodles?
Features: When it hides in coral, it looks exactly like soggy noodles. It grows zooxanthellae in its body to photosynthesize, and in an emergency, it drops parts of its body like a 'lizard's tail' and runs. And the guy I'm about to show you is the ultimate final boss. It's so weirdly evolved that scientists only recently realized it's a gastropod;; ㄷㄷㄷㄷ
⑩ The One Who 'Gave Up' Being a Snail (Enteroxenos oestergreni) Category: Caenogastropoda One-line summary: Abandoned all organs to become 'sea cucumber guts.'
Some parasitic needle snails decided to just move inside a sea cucumber's body. Shell? Eyes? Brain? Even digestive organs? They ditched everything. They degenerated into a long tube shape that's basically just genitals, sucking nutrients from the sea cucumber through their skin and just laying eggs. The most shocking end-point of degeneration. So, what do you think? From the guy that regrows its head, to the one using its shell as a mace, to the one that became sea cucumber guts... I've gathered even more 'extreme' ones without overlapping with the weirdos in Part 1. Whether it's the 'Tech Faction' maximizing their shells or the 'Revolutionary Faction' modding their own bodies, they all have different methods, but maybe these are all desperate survival answers created by 500 million years of evolution. They might look bizarre to us, but they're all champions who won in their own environments. This concludes Evolution of Gastropods Season 2. Thanks for reading this long post, and if the reaction is good, I'll be back with more fun stories. Source: Snail Gallery
"The community is absolutely losing it over the 'Mace-snail' and its pro shell-spinning skills, while everyone's mind is blown by the slug that chooses the 'eunuch life' for love."
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