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Lybia tessellata
Pom-pom Crab
On shallow reefs, a small mosaic-patterned crab holds a living sea anemone in each claw. The anemones look like pom-poms, but their stinging cells give the crab something more useful than decoration. It can wave them at intruders.
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Macropinna
Barreleye
The green tubes inside the clear dome are the eyes. A barreleye can hold them upward to look for the silhouettes of prey, then swivel them forward as it closes in. The little dark spots above the mouth are part of its sense of smell.
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Spirobranchus giganteus
Christmas Tree Worm
Two spiral crowns stick out of a tube sunk into living coral. Those feathery branches collect food from the water and help the worm breathe. A disturbance can make both crowns vanish below the coral’s surface.
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Costasiella kuroshimae
Leaf Sheep
This tiny slug feeds on algae in shallow tropical water. The leaflike projections on its back can hold chloroplasts from the algae it eats. The chloroplasts keep using sunlight for a time inside the slug, while the two dark stalks on its head help it sense its surroundings.
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Mimic octopus
This octopus reshapes itself on shallow Indo-Pacific sand flats. For one impersonation it hides most of its body in a hole and makes two banded arms ripple like a sea snake. The same flexible body can suggest a flatfish at another moment.
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Jorunna parva
Sea Bunny
A fuzzy-looking body and two dark ear-shaped stalks gave this small sea slug its nickname. The stalks are rhinophores, sensory organs that detect chemicals in the water. Each photographed little bump belongs to the slug’s textured surface.
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Upside-Down Jelly
The jelly rests with its bell against the bottom of a shallow lagoon. Its flowerlike oral arms face the sun, where symbiotic algae in its tissues can make food from light. The pose can make a group look like a patch of plants.
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Peacock Mantis Shrimp
Large eyes on stalks rise above the face, and the folded front limbs hide club-shaped striking surfaces. The shrimp uses those clubs to crack hard-shelled prey. The striking colors make the folded arms easy to miss at first.
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Leafy Seadragon
The leafy outline helps it disappear against seaweed and seagrass on cool Australian reefs. Separate fins move the fish, while its tubular mouth sucks up small shrimp. Look for the actual eye among all the foliage-shaped extensions.
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Lepas anatifera
Goose Barnacle
A flexible stalk attaches to drifting wood and other floating objects. Hard plates protect the body at the free end, and featherlike feeding legs sweep plankton from passing water. From a distance, a cluster can look like a bunch of buds.
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Smalltooth sawfish
This ray has a flat snout lined with rows of teeth. It sweeps its snout from side to side to strike prey. The teeth are what make the snout look like a saw blade even when the animal lies still on the seabed.
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Eunice aphroditois
Bobbit Worm
This long worm hides most of its segmented body under tropical sand. The antennae around its head are often the part left in view. It lunges from the burrow when prey passes close enough for its jaws.
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Chambered Nautilus
A nautilus lives in the newest, outermost chamber of its spiral shell. Older chambers help control buoyancy as the animal moves along a reef slope. Its many short tentacles grip with sticky surfaces instead of the suction cups familiar from octopuses.
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Portuguese Man o’ War
The blue-purple float catches the wind at the sea surface. Tentacles hang from the underside and capture prey for a colony of specialized individuals that work together. The air-filled sail is the visible tip of the whole arrangement.
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Glaucus atlanticus
Blue Dragon Sea Slug
The outstretched branches of this little blue slug spread at the surface of the ocean. It floats upside down, supported by swallowed air. It feeds on other drifting animals and stores some of their stinging cells in its own tissues.
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Ocean Sunfish
A tall dorsal fin and an equally conspicuous lower fin stick out from a flattened disk. Where a familiar fish tail might be, there’s a blunt edge called a clavus. The two tall fins do much of the work of swimming.
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Sea Angel
This transparent swimming snail beats a pair of flattened foot lobes that look like wings. The adult has no shell. The shape makes sense in open water, where the animal swims in search of other small snails.
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Giant oarfish
The silver body of a giant oarfish narrows into a long ribbon edged by a dorsal fin. At the head, some of the fin rays rise into a red crest, giving the fish a profile that looks more like a sea serpent than a typical fish.
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Crystal Amphipod
This shrimp-like crustacean has enormous eyes on an almost transparent body. The see-through shell helps disguise it in the twilight zone. Its retinas are spread into a thin sheet, which reduces the shadow they would otherwise cast.
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Barrel Amphipod
The clear barrel around this crustacean is the hollowed-out body of a salp. The amphipod carries the barrel through open water as a shelter. One pair of eyes looks to the sides while a much bigger pair looks upward from inside it.
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Strawberry Squid
The big left eye looks up for silhouettes against the remaining sunlight. The smaller eye looks into darker water for flashes from other animals. That crooked pair lets one squid watch two very different backgrounds.
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