It's half-plant, half-animal

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34824610/ns ... ?GT1=43001

 

Rise of the planimals!

 

It sure is scary.

 

At the same time, I'd hit that!

 

Victory of evolution.

 

Fungi? Wait...so there are my summoned Mi-Go's gone to.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysia_chlorotica

Belongs to Kingdom Animalia.

 

Today, it's chlorophyll, tomorrow, it's nuclear war...

 

Elysia Chlorotica sounds like a bad porn to me.

 

Bad porn!?

 

That's not my master plan. I intend to teach octopus's how to use armor so they can one day take over a nuclear submarine. After that my demands shall finally be met.

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/LPnd_KzGdHI&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/LPnd_KzGdHI&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

 

That's probably Buu in disguise.

Calling it half-plant is a bit of a stretch if you'd ask me. Nonetheless, this ends up on the same place as the biologically immortal jellyfish in my personal "unusual & awesome nature" ranking. How come they don't teach about such curiosities in school?

Fungi take cell walls from plants and chitin from animals. That green slug has neither and what's more, it has chloroplasts, which fungi lack, while still being something between an animal and a plant. I would say this thing is the first known example of an antifungi.

Those demands being...?

 

It looks more like the first known example of a legitimate transformation of a heterotrophic organism into a phototrophic one, not really hitting "antifungi" status until it's second life "stage" when it has fully developed chloroplasts and can thus gain energy through photosynthesis. Being an animal (or at least part thereof) it most likely breathes oxygen, and I'm wondering if it can in some way utilize the oxygen byproduct from its own photosynthesis as a means of secondary form of cellular respiration.

 

I of course agree, there was more joking than seriousness in my antifungi statement there. Then again, if the slug will improve with following generations and gain the ability of carrying out photosynthesis from the very beginning of its life without eating any algae...

 

That would be cool to see. I bet that could easily be done synthetically with phage injection, but I wouldn't be surprized if it happened naturally too. It already has the genes coding for photosynthesis, now all it needs are the genes coding for synthesis of the proper proteins that make up the chloroplasts. I'd guess that it would only be a matter of time with the birth of enough generations.