---
title: Blunt Elysia (Elysia obtusa)
scientific_name: Elysia obtusa
common_name: Blunt Elysia
taxon: Sap-sucking slugs
published: 2026-08-07T16:29:44.223Z
updated: 2026-08-20T17:09:46.291Z
tags: Blunt Elysia, Elysia obtusa, Sap-sucking slugs, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/molluscs/sap-sucking-slugs/blunt-elysia
---

# Blunt Elysia (*Elysia obtusa*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Sap-sucking slugs (*Sacoglossa*)
- **Size:** up to 3 cm
- **Depth:** 0-15 m
- **Diet:** Herbivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Rare
- **Habitat:** Green algae on shallow rubble
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer, Simultaneous hermaphrodite

## How to recognise it

- short rounded flaps with a blunt rear end
- olive to brown-green, sparsely speckled
- smaller and plainer than the marked elysias
- length up to 3 cm

A plain olive to brown-green sacoglossan of about 3 cm (1.2 in), its flaps short and rounded and the rear end blunt - the shape that names it, and nearly the only thing to go on, since it lacks the colored margins that make its relatives easy.

It lives on green algae over shallow rubble and feeds as the family does, puncturing cells and retaining the chloroplasts. Plain coloring and small size make it easy to overlook and hard to name from a photograph; several similar animals in this genus are separated on details of the radula, which needs a specimen. That is worth knowing before recording it - a green Elysia without markings on this coast is best photographed from directly above, with the flaps visible, and left as a question until someone with a microscope answers it.

## Also known as

- **Japanese:** オトメミドリガイ
- **Russian:** Элизия тупая
- **KO:** 무딘날씬이갯민숭이붙이

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/molluscs/sap-sucking-slugs/blunt-elysia)*
*Updated: August 20, 2026*