Gastropod Sex

We were talking about it briefly on The Squirrel Report, the nudibranch sex story!

As hermaphrodites, the diverse group of brightly colored sea slugs called nudibranches are already considered unusual when it comes to sex. But one species does something particularly peculiar: Chromodoris reticulata detaches and discards its penis after mating, then grows another to go again 24 hours later, according to a study published this week (February 13) in Biology Letters.

Having collected the sea slugs from reefs off the coast of Okinawa, Japan, researchers observed the creatures mating in tanks. They saw that sea slugs that had recently mated could not do so again for at least 24 hours. Then they noticed the reason why: the sea slugs sloughed off their male sex organs around 20 minutes after mating, leaving them without the anatomy required to repeat the trick until it grew back a day or so later.

Really cool, a more in-deptch story here

Still this isn’t as odd in the Mollusk family, many cephalapods do the same thing with a mating arm that gets broken off in the female where it continues to copulate.

And we also talked about this video on the show:

In case you don’t buy the re-enactment, its 100% true. Also the bit about the anus would be BETTER if it was on top of its head, instead shelled gastropods defecate onto their own gills, that’s the drawback of that armored shell!

And last where would this post be without this song?

h/t C-90