Jared, Caleb and I went to the beach last week and thought we should have a mystery photo from our day at the beach, and decided to do the barnacles. It was a fun day--swimming and body surfing and just enjoying God's wonderful creation.
By the way, I think there are two species... the grayish ones that don't show up well, vs. the white ones. And as Max mentioned, there are some "deserted" ones that are no longer alive, and some alive and well. So Steve, we look forward to the full Marine Biologist analysis shortly...With love, Rick for all of us............................
2 comments:
It is a little hard to tell from the photos, but my guess is that you have two species representing two different genera. It looks to me like the white ones have a more flexible shell (perhaps without a "floor") and the grey ones a more rigid shell (perhaps with a "floor")--you can test the "floor" idea by popping a couple off the rock to see what remains. Barnacles are related to shrimp (they glue their heads to the rock and kick food into their mouths with their feet, feeding at high tide when underwater), and the deserted shells represent animals that have died. Darwin studied barnacles for a number of years before going on to do evolution, and marine biologists love them because they stay put and can easily be experimented with (and it is easy to work with lots of them at one time...not like eagles or bears or sharks which are hard to work with in large numbers). Barnacle reproduction is an even more amazing topic, but perhaps not for a family blog...you can do your own research on the web if curious.
haha yeah i remember that last little bit in Biology class... :P in a US public school everyone thinks that is REALLY funny
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