Stealing Solar Power for A Living
We all know that leafy vegetables are a good source of iron and fibre for our bodies, but this tiny sea slug living in the sandy and rocky shores of the Andamans gains the superpower of harnessing the sun by feeding on them!
Plakobranchus ocellatus is a sap-sucking sea slug. This means that this slug feeds on green algae by sucking out its cellular contents. Much like plants, green algae contain chloroplasts, which function as microscopic solar panels, that help plants and algae create food from sunlight. Plakobranchus steals thousands of these chloroplasts from the green algae and puts them to use for itself when the need arises. This is a unique phenomenon in nature called kleptoplasty (klepto = thief, plasty = referring here to the cellular contents).
The chloroplasts are retained and kept alive in the slug’s digestive system and transported to various parts of the slug’s body whenever there is a shortage of food in its surrounding environment. This gives the slug a cool green tinge and allows the slug to create its own food from sunlight, much like a moving leaf!