Victorian zoologist Louis Agassiz, “nothing more than a little shrimp-like animal, standing on its head in a limestone house and kicking food into its mouth. Barnacles have the longest penis in the animal kingdom, in proportion to their body length. They are abundant on the seashore, docks, and pilings.
How Barnacles Eat
Barnacles have appendages called cirri. They reach out into the water and grab food particles like a scoop net. When the cirri is drawn back, the food is scraped off into the mouth.
Barnacle Life Stages
There are 2 larvae stages for barnacles. They are the nauplius and cypris stages. Nauplius swims freely like zooplankton in the water, molting many times before becoming cypris. Cypris does not eat at this stage, but is on a mission to find a good surface to settle and cement itself on. Cypris attaches itself to its new spot by its antennas. Within 12 hours of attachment we now have a mature barnacle with a shell.