We all know there are plants, and there are animals. Some are just difficult to classify. Just ten years ago, the leafy, emerald green sea slug (Elysia chlorotica) was thought to be both plant and animal but since has been discovered to use kleptoplasty. This slug eats algae and actually steals the genes from the algae and uses it to photosynthesize its own food – for up to nine months. How cool is that? Moreover, this “animal” can do this, because it carries a gene already that repairs chloroplasts in plants. Does that make the sea slug plant or animal? Or both? I’ll let you decide.
In Science Alert’s 2015 article, This Sea Slug “Feeds” on Sunlight Using Photosynthesis, by Bec Crew, this discovery is even more important because it’s a rare example of “functional gene transfer from one multicellular species to another, a necessity for human gene therapy.
It’d be a shame to have only one species with that talent. What else is out there?