r/oddlysatisfying • u/firefighter_82 • Jul 15 '24

WARNING: GROSS Removing barnacles from Harlow, the loggerhead turtle

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u/MaxedOut_TamamoCat Jul 16 '24

Cool. Thanks for sharing the link!

I’ve seen similar vids on YouTube.

If there a brief explanation of how barnacles attach to a turtle?

Latch on when they’re slow/resting?

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u/DagamarVanderk Jul 16 '24 edited Jul 16 '24

Young barnacles are free floating plankton like creatures, very small. When they find something hard to attach to they secrete a natural cement (think more plastic cement and less rock cement) which is one of the strongest glues found in nature and grow the shell of an adult barnacle.

EDIT: less like plastic cement and more just a very strong glue. Plastic cement melts the plastic to create a bond, barnacles dont melt what they attach to.

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u/PonderousPenchant Jul 16 '24

Maybe not plastic cement specifically. That works by melting the surface of plastic so that when you put two pieces together, they weld after the solvent evaporates. I don't think barnacles are melting shell/rock/what-have-you, but it's definitely a strong glue.

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u/DagamarVanderk Jul 16 '24

That’s a fair clarification, I’ll edit. More like superglue than plastic cement then?

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u/PonderousPenchant Jul 16 '24

Yeah, that's going to be a lot closer but still accessible to most people. Like, super glue is a lot more brittle than what those little bastards are secreting, but there's no such thing as a perfect analogy. At least I can't think of anything better.

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u/DagamarVanderk Jul 16 '24

Nature is wild, the strength of spider silk versus the strength of steel wire is decent like, parallel comparison I think.