---
title: Wedge Sea Hare (Dolabella auricularia)
scientific_name: Dolabella auricularia
common_name: Wedge Sea Hare
taxon: Opisthobranchia
published: 2026-08-11T12:13:44.740Z
updated: 2026-08-11T13:13:31.229Z
tags: Wedge Sea Hare, Dolabella auricularia, Opisthobranchia, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/molluscs/opisthobranchia/wedge-sea-hare
---

# Wedge Sea Hare (*Dolabella auricularia*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Opisthobranchia (*Opisthobranchia*)
- **Size:** up to 50 cm
- **Depth:** 0-15 m
- **Diet:** Herbivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Sheltered sand, seagrass and algae flats in lagoons
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer, Simultaneous hermaphrodite
- **Hazard:** Poisonous

## How to recognise it

- huge greenish-brown body ending in a broad flat disc at the rear
- skin covered in tubercles and skin flaps, looking like a lump of weed
- leaves tangled orange or green egg strings on the bottom
- length up to 50 cm

A slab of an animal, up to 50 cm (20 in) and heavy enough to be mistaken for a rock covered in weed. The rear end is cut off flat into a broad disc, the skin is a mess of tubercles and flaps, and the whole thing looks so unlike a snail that most people who find one have to be told what they are looking at.

It plows through sheltered lagoons and algae flats, grazing steadily, and leaves its eggs behind in tangled strings of orange or green noodles that are far easier to spot than the animal itself. A single mass can hold millions of eggs, and finding one usually means the parent is somewhere within a meter or two.

It is also a chemist's animal. Compounds isolated from this species - the dolastatins - became the basis of an approved anticancer drug, one of the clearest cases of marine natural-product research reaching an actual clinic. The molecules originate with cyanobacteria the sea hare eats and concentrates, which is the same trick it uses for its color and its defense.

## Also known as

- **English:** Anvil Sea Hare, blunt-end seahare, donsol
- **German:** Stumpfenden-Seehase
- **Russian:** Долабелла

## Scientific synonyms

- *Aplysia ecaudata* Rang, 1828
- *Aplysia gigas* Rang, 1828
- *Aplysia hasseltii* A. Férussac, 1828
- *Aplysia teremidi* Rang, 1828
- *Aplysia truncata* Rang, 1828
- *Dolabella andersoni* J. K. Allan, 1941
- *Dolabella callosa* Lamarck, 1801
- *Dolabella cheni* W. K. C. Sun, 1960
- *Dolabella ecaudata* (Rang, 1828)
- *Dolabella gigas* (Rang, 1828)
- *Dolabella hasseltii* (A. Férussac, 1828)
- *Dolabella rumphii* Cuvier, 1817
- *Dolabella rumphii var. maculosa* Bergh, 1905
- *Dolabella scapula* O'Donoghue, 1929
- *Dolabella variegata* Pease, 1860
- *Patella auricularia* [Lightfoot], 1786
- *Patella scapula* Martyn, 1786

## Range

Australian part of the Coral Sea, Australian part of the Indian Ocean, Mascarene Islands, Mozambique, North Pacific Ocean, South Africa, Tasman Sea

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/molluscs/opisthobranchia/wedge-sea-hare)*
*Updated: August 11, 2026*