A worldwide community photographing and learning about wildlife
Project Noah Nature School
Cratena peregrina
The pilgrim hervia is small aeolid sea slug, its average size is between 3 to 5 cm. The body is thin and slender, with a long sharply pointed tail. Its body coloration is milky white with 8 to 10 clusters of dorsal cerata which can be bright red, purple, brown or blue, with the tips coloured in luminescent blue. Those cerata act like gills, and each one contains a terminal outgrowth of the digestive gland, a diverticulum. The head, which is the same colour as the body, has a pair of bright orange rhinophores, and with two whitish long buccal tentacles, which look like like horns.
Rocks and reefs. Mediterranean Sea.
This is Cratena peregrina, a common species in the Mediterranean and Eastern Atlantic easily recognized by the two orange patches on the head and the smooth rhinophores with orange tips.
Spotted on Sep 23, 2010
Submitted on May 22, 2011
