Puppy Play

Another nudibranch I've had a difficult time photographing in a unique manner in the past is this one, a Jorunna rubescens:


Jorunna rubescens, the puppy dog nudibranch

If you Google "Jorunna rubescens" and look at the Images section, most of the photos are nondescript, lacking a "Wow!" factor. That's not for a dearth of people trying to take nice photographs. It's just darn difficult to make this nudi look like much.

Totomega lens to the rescue again!

I've always referred to this sea slug as "the puppy dog nudibranch", since the resemblance is obvious, at least to me. Not everyone got the reference though, so now I have a series of photographs to back up my nudi nomenclature.


How can you not want to scratch behind its ears?

Incidentally, I misidentified this nudibranch earlier, when I posted a photograph of a juvenile Jorunna. Ron Silver was kind enough to send me a note letting me know that the name was amended in 2002 from Kentrodoris rubescens (my original ID) to Jorunna rubescens. Thank you Ron!

This is the final photograph I captured of this sea slug species while I was in Ambon:


See the hapless helper?

Look carefully, and you'll see a confused crustacean cast in the role of a chew toy...just to round out the metaphor.