If you’ve ever tried to remove a barnacle from a boat hull or piling, you learned they don’t go easily. You’re lucky if they go at all. Barnacles cling to ships, rocks and even to the skin of whales.

If it is a female, this is the stage when it hooks itself onto its victim – in most cases the common shore crab. When firmly ...

Scroll long enough, and you will see barnacles portrayed all over social media as ocean troublemakers. People violently scrape them off ship hulls and sea turtles like they are the problem. In reality ...

Barnacles have the longest penis of any animal, relative to body size. Adults fuse onto one spot, so this is a necessary adaptation to reach eggs to fertilize. Their penises also taste and smell in ...