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Huge biological discovery | Decapitated sea slugs can regenerate entirely new body

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An off-duty scientist in Japan noticed some rather odd behavior in her pets, unexpectedly leading to the huge biological discovery that sea slugs can regrow a brand NEW BODY after detaching their heads from their old bodies – fresh heart and organs included!

Although the sacoglossan sea slug had already been observed in nature often floating around with no body, scientists assumed another creature had taken a bite out of them for lunch and that the floating head would soon die. Well, they couldn’t have been more wrong.

Fortunately for science, Sayaka Mitoh, a PhD candidate in the lab of Yoichi Yusa, is one of the rare people that likes sea slugs so much she keeps them as pets. She raises them from eggs to adults.

Mitoh noticed some of her sea slugs’ heads continued to go about their day even after being severed from their bodies, zombie style. The decapitated heads then started to feed on algae, even though they had no digestive system... Within days, the neck wounds closed, and a week later, the slug heads developed new hearts. In less than a month, they had a whole new body. Easier than doing a six-week fitness challenge!

The researchers are still unsure how the hell they do this. Study author Yoichi Yusa said, ‘This is the most extreme case of autotomy as far as we know’. Over 200 species of invertebrates are capable of some form of autotomy (the ability to shed body parts), but shedding an entire body is another level.

Mitoh suspects there are stem-like cells at the end of the neck capable of developing a new body. The sea slugs’ unique ability to obtain nutrients from photosynthesis, even when they can’t digest food, might explain how they get the necessary energy. Yusa also explained, ‘We think that one of the functions of this autotomy is to eliminate internal parasites’.

Understanding how the slugs manage it could yield valuable results for humans. The study was published in the journal Cell.

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