A place we stopped today driving north on the beautiful Croatian Coast. Interesting for me: Lots of stone sea urchins (Paracentrotus lividus) here, and the smaller ones are masking themselves with little stones, shells or even leaves, holding these with their ambulacral „feets“ that have little suckers so the stones stuck on top of them. It is not definitely known, why they are doing this. Some hypotheses are that they do this masking to protect them from predators or as a shield agains UV rays,.. Isn‘t it interesting, that there are so many unsolved mysteries in nature?
Really lovely. We were booked to go to Croatia and Slovenia in May 2020 but, of course, that had to be cancelled. I am particularly enjoying these shots of yours for that reason but also because they are such fine photos.
