The Fantastically Weird World of Photosynthetic Sea Slugs | Michael Middlebrooks | TED

Meet the fantastically colorful and astonishingly adaptable sea slugs that found a way to photosynthesize (or create energy from sunlight) like plants. Diving deep into these often overlooked creatures, invertebrate zoologist Michael Middlebrooks introduces the solar-powered slugs that lost their shells -- but gained the ability to directly harness the power of the sun.

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[sohovulture]

Fascinating and a great presentation. Always gives me a buzz seeing someone who is so obviously excited by their field.

[pietajunior]

It's a wonderful thing when a person is so nerdy about a very specific subject. This means that they love it with all their heart, and this guy certainly does so!

[uumlaut-]

These are my favorite slugs, and animals in general! I'm currently writing my Batchelor on kleptoplasty and planing on doing something similar for my masters! Amazing talk

[bottomlessinkwell]

Perfect random interesting science topic! I love it anytime animals are photosynthesizing which I imagine isn’t all that often. Unless there’s something about my skin I don’t know about.

[Anonymous]

I live about three hours from Anilao and dive there every month or so. Our nudibranchs are a national treasure. They're like the Hot Wheels of the sea.

[jeffreyreed]

This has been the area I have considered for my PhD. I have looked for and taken many dives in Anilao, Philappines, Indonesia and Thailand. The diversity is incredible and they are so beautiful. Thank you for a wonderful presentation.

[KJensenStudio]

Nudibranchs are so lovely, they look like they'd make great glass sculptures. We had a pet snail named 'Ruffles' once, and Ruffles was an artist of sorts. He/she was mad for eating notebook paper, very particular about which notebook, and would then commence to create elaborate designs only on the glass walls of her house, using her own supply of post-processed papier mache'. A worthy Snail indeed.

[OfficialGOD]

Beautiful example of a fascinating evolutionary adaptation. Over time, natural selection has favored individuals with the ability to retain functional chloroplasts, as it provides them with an additional energy source.

[miriamrosemary]

This was awesome!!! I've always liked watching garden snails and slugs, but this is on a whole other level. Absolutely gorgeous, and it really blurs the line between what separates plants from animals. Fascinating.

[tylerreeves]

Wow I really like Michael's presentation style and his passion is infectious! What fascinating creatures!

[sam]

Mindblowing animals, thank you for your research 🙌

[invox]

A Ted with more questions than answers... Loved it.

[chirpter]

The slugs must have gotten chlorophyll genes laterally transferred to them from the algae or from the chloroplast genome itself, which is kinda crazy. Since chloroplasts are themselves descended directly from bacteria (specifically different Cyanobacteria), this means the slugs acquired these genes from another Domain of life, literally billions of years after those two lineages diverged from a common ancestor!

[michelleveronica]

I'm always fascinated with marine invertebrates but didn't even think why some have blue color when it's so rare for land vertibrates.

[M]

Thanks for this video. Nice to know about such amazing animals. I hope in the future we can realize how they do it.

[rottenmelodyss_]

I would absolutely love to hear more of this man's research!! i love sacoglossans and the weird things they are able to do, my favorite sea slugs!!

[sMVshortMusicVideos]

I did not know that was possible. A new twist on life's adaptability.

[mho...]

Fascinating!
And the Fact that they figured out how to make Chlorophyll is astonishing!

[newtagwhodis]

This piqued my curiosity the same way old computer oceanography “games”, basically visual encyclopedias for old computers (1999), from my town’s library helped me first explore the realm of aquatic diversity of life. This was amazing and I can’t wait to learn more about biology. It also fascinates me how they steal these superpowers!

[avirichar]

i mean while the scifi implications are perhaps sciency fantasy more than anything with the rigorous potential to be questioned into actual problem-solvable reality, this does raise the interesting possibility for a really practical reason behind the idea that any ETs might most often be in the category of "little green men" ...if you can cut out most (to all) of the food chain entirely and go straight to living off of starlight, space travel itself becomes an entirely different animal