---
title: Hooded Elysia (Elysia marginata)
scientific_name: Elysia marginata
common_name: Hooded Elysia
taxon: Sap-sucking slugs
published: 2026-08-07T16:29:44.167Z
updated: 2026-08-08T21:49:51.224Z
tags: Hooded Elysia, Elysia marginata, Sap-sucking slugs, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/molluscs/sap-sucking-slugs/hooded-elysia
---

# Hooded Elysia (*Elysia marginata*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Sap-sucking slugs (*Sacoglossa*)
- **Size:** up to 8 cm
- **Depth:** 0-20 m
- **Diet:** Herbivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Green algae on sheltered reef and rubble
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer, Simultaneous hermaphrodite

## How to recognise it

- tall side flaps with a pale wavy margin
- green body flecked with white and dark spots
- flaps held raised rather than folded flat
- length up to 8 cm

A green sacoglossan to about 8 cm (3 in) with tall side flaps carrying a pale wavy margin, the body between them flecked white and dark. It feeds by piercing algal cells and keeping the chloroplasts alive in its own tissues, so like its relatives it is part animal, part solar panel.

It is also the species behind one of the strangest findings in recent zoology. In 2021 researchers watching this slug and a close relative recorded animals shedding the entire body behind the head - heart, gut and all - after which the severed head crawled off, fed within hours and regrew a complete new body over about three weeks. The discarded body kept moving for days. The likely trigger is parasite load: the head walks away from an infested body rather than dying with it. Nothing else among molluscs does this at that scale, and it happens in an animal a diver can find on shallow weed here.

## Also known as

- **English:** Tri-banded Taco Slug
- **French:** Elysie bordée
- **Japanese:** コノハミドリガイ
- **Chinese:** 緣邊平鰓海天牛
- **Russian:** Элизия окаймлённая
- **KO:** 파래날씬이갯민숭붙이

## Scientific synonyms

- *Pterogasteron marginatus* Pease, 1871

## Range

Mozambique, Mozambique Channel, South Africa

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/molluscs/sap-sucking-slugs/hooded-elysia)*
*Updated: August 8, 2026*