(November 28, 2018 at 9:18 pm)Everena Wrote:(November 28, 2018 at 8:25 pm)Paleophyte Wrote: By what definition of the term is a barnacle conscious?
Seems conscious enough:
"The sessile lifestyle of barnacles makes sexual reproduction difficult, as the organisms cannot leave their shells to mate. To facilitate genetic transfer between isolated individuals, barnacles have extraordinarily long penises. Barnacles probably have the largest penis to body size ratio of the animal kingdom.[11]
Barnacles can also reproduce through a method called spermcasting, in which the male barnacle releases his sperm into the water and females pick it up and fertilise their eggs.[13]
The Rhizocephala superorder used to be considered hermaphroditic, but it turned out that its males inject themselves into the female's body, degrading to the condition of nothing more than sperm-producing cells.[14
So like fungi do then, right?