Not a Plant, Not a Sheep… It's a Photosynthesizing Slug!

But it’s dressed like a plant… and powers itself like one, too.

Meet the Leaf Sheep (Costasiella kuroshimae) — one of the smallest and strangest marvels of the sea.

Barely the size of a grain of rice, this creature has black ear-like tentacles, bead-black eyes, and a back covered in tiny green “leaves.”

Those aren’t leaves at all — they’re cerata, filled with stolen chloroplasts from the algae it eats.

Through a process called kleptoplasty, the Leaf Sheep turns sunlight into energy, making it one of the few animals on Earth to photosynthesize.

Its leafy camouflage hides it among seaweed while its stolen solar cells fuel its day.

【Rippi/リッピ】

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FinBella Sci-Fi Sirens 2025 Live Show

Flexible feather armor

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, miners throughout the western United States and Nevada discovered a biological solution to the rodent infestations that plagued their cabins and mine shafts. Rather than relying on traditional house cats, these frontiersmen began to socialize with the ringtail, a small and elusive member of the raccoon family. Because these nocturnal predators are exceptionally skilled hunters with a natural preference for mice and rats, they earned the enduring nickname of miner's cat.

Miners would often encourage a wild ringtail to take up residence by providing it with a simple wooden box for a daytime den. In exchange for a quiet place to sleep, the animal would emerge at night to hunt with far more efficiency than a domesticated cat. The ringtail's specialized anatomy, including hind feet that can rotate 180 degrees and the ability to shimmy up vertical crevices through chimney stemming, allowed it to pursue rodents into the most inaccessible parts of a mine. These animals were so highly valued for their pest control and surprisingly affectionate dispositions that they frequently became the primary companions for solitary miners living in remote canyons.

The Artemis II crew—Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen—have safely exited the Orion spacecraft (named Integrity) after a textbook splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego on April 10, 2026.

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“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”