Imagine you’re happily floating around at the bottom of the ocean and all of a sudden you see something out of the corner of your eye.
It’s large, transparent and has what appears to be a jellyfish for a head, if that wasn’t bad enough it’s also sporting a casual 13 legs.
Meet the Melibe Viridis, a humble sea slug that looks more like an alien than most aliens do in films.
It is in fact a sea slug, and a particularly unusual one at that. At around five inches long it trawls across the seabed looking for plant life or small crustaceans to ingest.
What’s particularly bizarre about viridis is the way in which it eats. Its head is actually a large ‘net’ which is used to catch small creatures. Once inside the net closes in around it and the sea slug then slowly digests it.
Why it has 13 legs though is a complete mystery, we assume that evolution wasn’t content with giving it a giant inflatable jellyfish for a head and decided to just go wild.
Either way we’ve all learnt something today, which is that if you ever want to see the closest thing to an alien all you need to do is head down to the Indian Ocean and go diving, you’ll be sure to bump into one.