"African Green-Spotted Sea Hare"

mrwilson

New member
Anybody know what the scientific name of the sea hare sold under the above common name might be? Really cool-looking creatures with lots of bristles/spiny-looking growths everywhere. Medium-to-dark brownish-grey, with a few small nearly neon-green-blue pinpoint spots on its back.
 
Maybe, but I don't think so, unless the coloration varies a lot from the pics in that link. The ones I saw were much darker, and the spots appeared to be both smaller than the ones in the pic, and also to have no orange (or any other color) ring around them. (Obviously a pic would help. I'll work on it.)
 
Did you go to the link that pagojoe posted, and scroll down to the bottom, and select "show factsheet and all related message"? That will show you the color varieties of the animal. Lots of slugs can have color variations.
 
I missed that at the bottom of that page, thanks for the heads-up, Elysia. Having checked some of those links and seeing all of the color variations, it very well could be Bursatella leachi. Various morphs of that species are apparently prevalent in tropical waters throughout the world. The green/blue spots on the ones I saw look a lot like those in the specimen pictured here: http://www.seaslugforum.net/display.cfm?id=13858.
 
No problem. There are a few circumtropical sea hares, and the hair/cirri type growths on this one make it pretty unique. If these are still in the dealer's tank, note that in some species egg laying is a sign that the sea slug is coming close to the end of its life. Depending on the species, the eggs look like different colors of flat noodles.
 
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