Discover the Underwater World: Top 9 Amazing and Fun Barnacle Facts You Never Knew!

1. Freeloading Barnacle Express

Hitching a ride on the turtle express: Barnacles are not only expert freeloading ticket-dodgers on sea turtles, but these ectoparasites can also turn harmful when they form a rowdy group, even though they know better than to attach themselves to whales or plastic debris for transportation.
Source => oliveridleyproject.org

2. Impressive Barnacle Dating Game

Talk about being well-endowed in the dating pool: Barnacles boast an impressive penis up to eight times their body length, allowing them to reach far-off mates, while the length varies depending on their surroundings and water turbulence conditions.
Source => ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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3. Acorn Barnacles: Love Gurus

Well, size does matter when you're a rock-bound barnacle looking for love: Acorn barnacles boast the longest relative penis size among animals and are hermaphrodites, allowing them to fertilize multiple partners despite being glued in place, and resulting in offspring with various fathers. Bonus fact: barnacles in stronger waves tend to have thicker appendages to handle the motions of the ocean.
Source => nature.com

4. Pollicipes Polymerus: Sperm Travel Agents

Move over, Cupid, there's a new love doctor in town: barnacles! These passion pioneers have put a fresh spin on the dating game, proving that size doesn't matter when it comes to making marine magic happen. Showcasing their resourcefulness, they've mastered an unconventional method of fertilization, making sperm travel agents out of every Tom, Dick, and Scary on the ocean floor: Behold the Pollicipes polymerus barnacle! This groovy little guy hailing from the northeast Pacific has the impressive ability to capture sperm from the water to fertilize their eggs, debunking over a century of beliefs about barnacle behavior and adding an entertaining twist to the tale of these tiny sea creatures with even tinier penises.
Source => ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

5. Barnacle Grip Strength Champions

If barnacles had a dating profile, their bio would boast about their dedication to sticking around and weathering life's stormy seas with their impressive grip strength: Barnacles are equipped with cement glands that produce a powerful natural adhesive, allowing them to attach themselves to various surfaces with an amazing force of up to 5,000 pounds-force per square inch, providing them a stable living space to filter food from the water using their feathery limbs.
Source => en.wikipedia.org

6. Longest Arm in Barnacle Dating

Barnacles surely have the longest arm in the dating pool: Most barnacles are hermaphrodites that require fertilization from a nearby fellow barnacle, and are equipped with retractable tubes containing sperm that can extend up to six to eight inches outside their shells, allowing them to successfully fertilize their neighbors and produce up to six broods a year.
Source => oceanservice.noaa.gov

7. Underwater Spider-Man Rival

If Spider-Man took an underwater vacation, he'd be green with envy when he met the mighty barnacle: Their natural adhesive is so powerful, it can withstand a pulling strength of 5,000 pounds-force per square inch, inspiring scientists to study their sticky secrets for advanced industrial glues.
Source => en.wikipedia.org

8. Barnacle Hunger Games

Feeling a bit peckish, Mr. Barnacle? As it turns out, these little cling-ons of the sea don't have it as easy as you might think: Barnacles face energy limitations across much of their vertical range, with their growth and survival being strongly influenced by the availability of food, making their sustenance a tidal wave of uncertainty.
Source => researchgate.net

9. Barnacles: The Clean Party Hosts

Barnacles, the underwater world's scrupulously clean party hosts: Rather than relying on common adhesive components like DOPA, acorn barnacles secrete a special surface-cleaning fluid made of lipids and reactive oxygen species, creating the ideal sticky and tidy environment for their marine guests while also inspiring new eco-friendly biofouling solutions.
Source => ncbi.nlm.nih.gov