EYE OPENER
Going with the flow
REG MORRISON/AUSCAPE/MINDEN
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
The common purple janthina’s fate rests entirely in the hands of the ocean. The marine mollusc spends most of its life bobbing along just below the sea’s surface, clinging to the bottom of a raft made of mucus bubbles blown from a gland in its foot. The janthina can’t swim, so if its bubble raft bursts, the 4cm-long snail will sink to the seabed and die. To avoid such potentially fatal punctures, the snotty bubbles it blows harden into a rubber-like material.