{"id":120366,"date":"2021-03-09T14:22:52","date_gmt":"2021-03-09T22:22:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/03\/these-sea-slugs-sever-their-own-heads-and-regenerate-brand-new-bodies"},"modified":"2021-03-09T14:22:52","modified_gmt":"2021-03-09T22:22:52","slug":"these-sea-slugs-sever-their-own-heads-and-regenerate-brand-new-bodies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/03\/these-sea-slugs-sever-their-own-heads-and-regenerate-brand-new-bodies","title":{"rendered":"These sea slugs sever their own heads and regenerate brand-new bodies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><video width=\"480\" height=\"360\" controls><source src=\"https:\/\/www.eurekalert.org\/multimedia\/pub\/media\/257927_web.mp4\" type=\"video\/mp4\"><\/video><\/p>\n<p>You\u2019ve heard of animals that can lose and then regenerate a tail or limb. But scientists reporting in the journal <em>Current Biology<\/em> on March 8 have now discovered two species of sacoglossan sea slug that can do even better, shedding and then regenerating a whole new body complete with the heart and other internal organs. The researchers also suggest that the slugs may use the photosynthetic ability of chloroplasts they incorporate from the algae in their diet to survive long enough for regeneration.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe were surprised to see the head moving just after autotomy,\u201d said Sayaka Mitoh of Nara Women\u2019s University in Japan. \u201cWe thought that it would die soon without a heart and other important organs, but we were surprised again to find that it regenerated the whole body.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The discovery was a matter of pure serendipity. Mitoh is a PhD candidate in the lab of Yoichi Yusa. The Yusa lab raises sea slugs from eggs to study their life history traits. One day, Mitoh saw something unexpected: a sacoglossan individual moving around without its body. They even witnessed one individual doing this twice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You\u2019ve heard of animals that can lose and then regenerate a tail or limb. But scientists reporting in the journal Current Biology on March 8 have now discovered two species of sacoglossan sea slug that can do even better, shedding and then regenerating a whole new body complete with the heart and other internal organs. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120366\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}