skin with superpowers

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SUPERPOWERS

THE leaf-shaped slug Elysia chlorotica is one of the only animals that can perform photosynthesis. It eats green algae, steals its chloroplasts and stores them in its skin cells to produce energy using sunlight. The species has incorporated some genes from algae it eats into its chromosomes that code for both chloroplast proteins and chlorophyll synthesis helping the slug survive on sunlight alone.     Source: nature.com

CEPHALOPODS can see with their skin. Opsin, a light-sensitive protein found in eyes, is also present in cephalopod skin, allowing them to detect different kinds of light. Sensory neurons in the skin synthesize opsin protein and then the enzymes transmit signals from opsin molecules that have been activated by light to the interior of the cell to initiate the cellular response.   

Source: kids.nationalgeographic.com

GIRAFFES are found in hot environments rather than cold. They must have evolved an appropriate array of thermoregulatory mechanisms to maintain a temperature that makes them well adapted to hot and arid environment. The dark patches on a giraffe’s body regulate their body temperature. Underneath each patch lies an obscure network of blood vessels and glands. These allow blood to flow through them, acting as a thermal window to release body heat and cooling the body. Source: kids.nationalgeographic.com

BORNEAN flat-headed frog(Barbourula kalimantanensis) is the world’s only known lung less frog, characterized by a flattened body and depressed head which gives it more surface area to absorb all the oxygen it needs through its skin only. These frogs five in clear, rocky, fast-following cold rivers (richer n oxygen) n moist tropical forests. The species has been listed endangered by the IUCN. 

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