#barnacles

[raccoon-go-bweh]

im on da beach

gotta find some mussels or something and I'll wash my lil raccoon paws before I munch and trill hehe

[samspicturesandwords]

[aquaticinverts]

barnacles on sea glass

[institute-for-cryptobiology]

The visionary barnacle (anelasma oraculum) is a parasitic, sessile barnacle native to shallow waters worldwide. Like its closest relative, anelasma squalicola, it is fully parasitic and feeds directly off the blood of its host instead of filter feeding like most other barnacles. 

Apart from the cirri, it retains the general body plan of most barnacles, with a rotund calcareous shell enclosing its body. The movable lid protecting its operculum is colored a dark, almost black, brown. Together with the white body, this leads to an appearance resembling an eye. 

Like many barnacles, a. oraculum is highly resistant to water loss. Since it isn't reliant on filter feeding and has access to a reliable source of moisture - the body of its host - the visionary barnacle can spend almost its entire life on an amphibious or even non-aquatic host. It only relies on aquatic environments for reproduction. 

Visionary barnacles secrete low concentrations of scopolamine through the tendrils they use for feeding. Scopolamine is a drug otherwise used for anesthesia and against spasms and gastrointestinal issues. It is hypothesized that this helps the barnacle to keep its host calm and healthy. 

It does, however, come with additional effects as the concentration of scopolamine in the host's body increases, for example because multiple visionary barnacles attach to the same host. In higher concentration, it induces mild hallucinations and confabulation, as well as phantom behaviours in which the affected host seems to interact with nonexistent objects or persons. 

Visionary barnacle larvae attach to animals, including humans, that enter shallow waters. Although the attachment to non-aquatic animals makes reproduction much harder, the larvae have no way of differentiating between potential aquatic and non-aquatic hosts. If the larva is removed or killed before it has completed its metamorphosis, the host retains only small wounds that heal quickly. Once grown, they are highly difficult to remove, as removal damages the surrounding tissue of the host. 

The wide variety of hosts makes it difficult to generalize the effects of the parasite. While hosts like small sharks can only sustain two or three parasites, large hosts like dolphins or humans may sustain between five and fifteen barnacles at once. 

Humans in coastal regions have been hosts to visionary barnacles throughout all of history. The resemblance in size, shape, and coloration to human eyes as well as the altered state of consciousness induced by large amounts of attached barnacles have led to the cultic use of visionary barnacles by priests, oracles, and mystics. 

The practice of ritual baths in ocean water pools that allowed the practitioner to “grow more eyes” and supposedly receive visions is attested in a variety of cultures worldwide, with the oldest known archaeological attestation being the remains of a sumerian priestess whose grave contained a total of seventeen visionary barnacles. Furthermore, similar practices are attested in the oral histories of multiple Australian aboriginal peoples that possibly date back to 20,000 BCE, but are no longer practiced today. 

Today, humans only rarely become hosts to visionary barnacles. If a larva attaches itself to a human, it is usually removed early enough to not become an issue. In the rare cage that a visionary barnacle grows to adulthood on a human host, surgical removal is necessary. In regions without access to modern medical care, this is usually done by penetrating the barnacle’s shell - killing it - and removing it piece by piece. This process is painful for the patient and the resulting wounds frequently get infected if the parasite isn't removed entirely. 

Intentional infection with anelasma oraculum is rare today. No known aboriginal cultures practice intentional infection today, and it is rare among neo-shamanic cultic practices. 

The practice had a brief resurrection in the public consciousness in 2013 on the then-popular microblogging website tumblr, when a user posted a series of selfies showing eight visionary barnacles attached to their throat and shoulder. The user claimed to have ‘received them as a divine present’ from a Wiccan deity. 

Over the course of two weeks, the dispute between initially concerned and well-meaning users and users who were either trolling or purposely ignorant degraded into an all-out dumpster fire. The user who had posted the selfies became increasingly erratic, although it is unclear how much of it was because of the infestation and how much was merely a result of the conflict. 

They last posted twelve days after the initial selfies, and the controversy died down soon after. To this day, the selfies occasionally show up in aesthetic posts for various pieces of horror media, divorced from their original context. 

[mugene-art]

a gorgeous corroded metal pipe encrusted with some creatures

spotted in Boston MA

[panoptinomicon]

[grimms-photo-storage]

[blackflowerz11]

Made a height chart of the Octonauts crew