Silver-blue coloring. A slender body. Branching extensions that resemble the wings of a miniature dragon.<\/p>\n
It sounds like a fantasy character, but Glaucus atlanticus<\/strong>, commonly called the blue dragon, is a real sea slug.<\/p>\n Its appearance is remarkable. Its lifestyle is even more surprising.<\/p>\n It floats upside down at the ocean\u2019s surface.<\/strong> A gas-filled sac helps keep it afloat as it drifts and encounters its prey. Source: Australian Museum<\/p>\n And that prey includes bluebottles\u2014the stinging marine animals many beachgoers know to avoid.<\/p>\n The blue dragon can retain stinging cells from its prey and use them for its own defense.<\/strong> Its delicate appearance is therefore a poor reason to pick it up. Observe it without handling it. Source: Australian Museum\u2019s Sea Slug Forum<\/p>\n Those elaborate branches make it look like something invented for a film. Yet the most extraordinary detail is hidden from view: this small animal turns its prey\u2019s defenses into its own.<\/p>\n The accompanying image is an AI-generated illustration, not a wildlife photograph or an identification guide.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Silver-blue coloring. A slender body. Branching extensions that resemble the wings of a miniature dragon. It sounds like a fantasy character, but Glaucus atlanticus, commonly called...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nulnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nulnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nulnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nulnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nulnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1546"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nulnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1550,"href":"https:\/\/nulnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546\/revisions\/1550"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nulnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nulnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nulnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nulnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}