Well, when the barnacle larva is being swept along the ocean currents and searching for a suitable place to secure itself, it secretes a brown type of glue with which it attaches itself to whatever is chosen – rocks, the hulls of ships, whales or crabs.
It is this glue which fascinates dental researchers because it hardens to a diamond-like consistency which both attaches the little creature and protects its shell. This glue is so strong that the barnacle’s cone base outlasts the creature by centuries.
Dentists who build up human teeth, insert and glue crowned teeth and generally have a hard time getting teeth to stay put in the human mouth, would give their all to find out what it is that lends this super consistent adhesiveness and hardness.
The typical barnacle looks like a mollusc but is actually a crustacean, a close cousin of the lobsters, shrimps and crabs.
In their larval stage they look just like baby shrimps, with which they swim around, or are swept about by ocean currents in the general large body of zoo plankton on which whales and giant manta rays feed.
Once attached, the barnacles secrete the calcium-hard plates which eventually totally encase them. These cone-like houses have six fitted plates in a circle around the little creature and four more plates which form a sort of sliding door which opens and closes when necessary.
They’re open when the water covers the creature, closed when the high inter-tidal zone in which they live is exposed at low tide to the elements.
When the tide comes in, a muscular rod opens the doors and the creature’s six pairs of feathery legs come out to sift the water for minute food particles.
The more a barnacle eats, the faster it grows, necessitating a change of home which it accomplishes by chemical processes about which the final word has not been spoken.
What is known is that the creature’s own shell consists of chitin, and is an exo-skeletal covering like those of lobsters.
Barnacles are hermaphrodites which means they have both male and female reproductive organs.
To produce their one-eyed larva the barnacle must get really friendly with its neighbour by producing a waving rod to deposit the sperm.
Good neighbourliness ensures the survival of the species, which has been around for countless millions of years.
