Goose barnacle

Uncommon card · No. 111823

Goose barnacles or stalked barnacles are any of several species of filter-feeding crustaceans characterized by a fleshy stalk of which one end is connected to an armored capitulum and the other end is used by the animal to attach to substrates such as intertidal rocks, flotsam or larger animals. Their resemblance of appendages of other species has earned this form of barnacle an array of common names. In Iberia, the species Pollicipes pollicipes is culinarily important and is called percebes (sing. percebe), derived from the Early Medieval Latin words for thumb and foot. The closely related P. polymerus is known in its North American range as gooseneck or leaf barnacle. The species eaten by people in Asia, Capitulum mitella, is known in Japan as turtle hand barnacle (亀の手 or カメノテ), while Chinese vernacular alludes to the legs or claws of crabs (石蜐), turtles (龟足) and dogs (狗爪), the comb of chickens (鸡冠), and the hands of Buddha (佛手) or Guanyin (观音掌).

Read on Wikipedia · Image Hans Hillewaert, CC BY-SA 4.0