Watch a sea snail run its own head… and survive – BGR

For most animals on this planet, losing their head would be a near death sentence. Creatures with special heads are usually used to hold brains and other vital organs, including sensory organs such as the eyes. The head is important, but it rarely lives without the body, which usually keeps the whole organism, including the head, alive. It is very rare to find an animal that will survive after losing its head or body, but a team of scientists from Nara Women’s University in Japan found not just one, but two.

The animals are sea creatures called sea snails. There are many different types of sea snails to be found in different parts of the world’s oceans, but no one who has studied both species had ink – Elysia cf. marginata and Elysia atroviridis – they were able to literally cut off their own heads and then bring back all the bodies. New paper published in Conventional biology reveals the remarkable discovery.

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Losing a ball for a reason is a possibility of a few creatures. Some reptiles, including geckos, have this ability, and these creatures use that power to escape predators even after being plucked. In the case of geckos, they can detach their tails and retract them over time. It’s a manipulative ability, but losing an entire body and then regaining it? Well, that’s largely unheard of.

“Autotomy, voluntary partial excision, is common for distant animals such as arthropods, gastropods, asteroids, amphibians and lizards,” the researchers write. “Self-awareness is generally followed by the replacement of shed body parts, such as appendages or tails. Here, we identify a new type of true autotomy in two species of sacoglossan sea snails. Surprisingly, they lost the main body, taking over the entire heart, and revived a new body. In contrast, the shed’s body was not resuscitated. ”

In videos showing the process in action, the head – which makes up just a small percentage of the snail’s total body mass – moves around on its own, with the body being throw lying without any list and no signs of life. Surprisingly, the process of exfoliating the body takes just a few hours, but the time it takes to recover what is lost is much longer.

The head injury closes first, usually sealing itself within 24 hours. Then, as the independent heads eat, the organs that have lost the snail begin to grow back, including the heart. Within 20 days, the snail had regained its entire body, and the discarded body had just rotted.

For animals that shed body parts, the missing parts and those that are considered the “heart” of the animal can change dramatically. In this case, the snail’s head is the unit from which the rest grows. In other animals, the main unit is the body, allowing appendage to grow back. And in even rarer cases, the body can regenerate head and brain if lost. Mother Nature, you are crazy!

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Mike Wehner has been reporting on technology and video games for the past decade, covering breaking news and trends in VR, wearables, smartphones, and the future of tech. Mike was most recently a Tech Editor at The Daily Dot, and has appeared in USA Today, Time.com, and in countless web and print outlets. His love of narrating only second place on his game thesis.

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