The sea angel is a curious transparent mollusk from the gastropod family that lives in polar seas, where it appears to “fly” by flapping its limbs. It was discovered in an archipelago in the Russian Arctic.
The scientific name for the sea angel is Clione limacina, and they are the only species in their family. Despite being mollusks, they only have a shell in their embryonic stage and reabsorb it throughout their development. In addition, they do not grow to be more than 10 centimeters in size.
Although they may seem harmless, they can resort to cannibalism when their usual food source is scarce. Their diet consists mainly of sea butterflies, a species that shares their habitat and which they devour in a gruesome manner.
When the sea angel detects a sea butterfly nearby, it begins to chase it and evokes six adhesive mouth cones from its mouth, forming a basket-shaped structure. It uses this structure to capture the sea butterfly, and once the poor snail is trapped, the sea angel rotates the sea butterfly’s shell until its opening faces the predator’s mouth.
After that, the terror begins. The poor sea butterfly hides in its shell at this point, but the sea angel uses a group of chitinous hooks in its mouth to pierce the sea butterfly’s body and, aided by its radula, pulls the entire body of its prey out from inside the shell, swallowing it whole in one go.
The life cycle of the sea angel usually lasts around two years. It is hermaphroditic, reproduces during the spring, and its eggs take approximately one year to hatch after copulation.
This beautiful mollusk is another of the wonderful discoveries found on the seabed, an ecosystem that is difficult to explore but which occasionally allows us to observe some of its incredible creations.