Invertebrate · Molluscs · Sap-sucking slugs

Blunt Elysia

Elysia obtusa Baba, 1938
up to 3 cm0-15 m
3

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.

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

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Last Update: August 20, 2026