---
title: Sea Bunny (Jorunna cf. parva)
scientific_name: Jorunna cf. parva
common_name: Sea Bunny
taxon: Nudibranch
published: 2024-05-05T11:11:06.258Z
updated: 2026-08-16T08:57:20.097Z
tags: Sea Bunny, Jorunna cf. parva, Nudibranch, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/molluscs/nudibranch/sea-bunny
---

# Sea Bunny (*Jorunna cf. parva*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Nudibranch (*Nudibranchia*)
- **Size:** 25 mm
- **Diet:** Spongivore
- **Activity:** Cathemeral
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Sponge-covered rock and rubble on shallow reef
- **Reproduction:** Simultaneous hermaphrodite, Egg layer

## How to recognise it

- dense velvet coat of black-tipped papillae over cream or white
- two black ears at the front, which are rhinophores
- ring of feathery gills at the rear that vanish into the body when touched
- up to 25 mm

The sea bunny went around the world in 2015 and most people who shared it had no idea what they were looking at.

The fur is not fur. Each hair is a caryophyllidium: a stiff papilla stiffened by a ring of calcareous spicules with a sensory knob on top, and the back of the animal is covered in thousands of them. What looks like a soft coat is a field of chemical and touch receptors, and its softness is exactly the opposite of the truth.

The ears are not ears either. They are rhinophores, the paired chemical sensors every nudibranch carries on its head, used to follow the scent trail of a sponge or another slug across the rubble. The flower at the back end is the gill, and it pulls into a pocket in the body the moment anything touches it.

And the scale is the part photographs never convey. This is a sea slug under 25 mm long, grazing sponges at the speed sea slugs manage, which is to say barely.

The cf. in the name is honest bookkeeping: the animals in this sea look like Jorunna parva but have not been confirmed as that species, and the group is likely to be split further.

## Also known as

- **English:** Peppercorn Velvet Dorid, Sea Bunny Slug, Sea Bunny
- **French:** Jorunna naine
- **Japanese:** ゴマフビロウドウミウシ, ゴマフビロードウミウシ
- **Chinese:** 碎毛盤海牛, 碎毛盤海蛞蝓
- **KO:** 꼬마비로드갯민숭달팽이

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/molluscs/nudibranch/sea-bunny)*
*Updated: August 16, 2026*