Watch this sea snail flutter through the ocean just like a butterfly
 

Watch this sea snail flutter through the ocean just like a butterfly
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Meet the sea butterfly. Unlike most species of zooplankton that occupy the all-important base of the marine food web, this sea snail earned its nickname by behaving more like an insect, fluttering its wings from top to bottom and contorting its tiny body to propel itself upward through the water column.

Nearly all other species of zooplankton use their limbs like paddles to move through the water, according to a new study in*the Journal of Experimental Biology.*

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High-speed camera footage of a sea butterfly swimming.


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In the study, researchers from Georgia Tech collected hundreds of the tiny mollusks from the Pacific Ocean and used high-speed cameras to record their movement, seeking to figure out precisely how and why the sea butterfly behaves like such an insect-plankton hybrid, or in the scientists' words, "a remarkable example of convergent evolution." Read more...


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