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2026 · Photo: Boaz Liebes
Blue velvet headshield slug
Philippines · Indo Pacific - South China Sea
A conspicuous head-shield slug (family Aglajidae), often seen gliding over sand in shallow lagoons. It hunts acoel flatworms, sensing them with cilia on the head and sucking them in whole with a muscular buccal bulb.
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Velvety black to dark indigo body with electric-blue (and some white) lines along the edges of the head shield, parapodia and tail lobes. Posterior shield ends in two unequal tail lobes, the left one long and tapering.
Tubulophilinopsis gardineri has similar black-and-blue colouring but lacks the long tapering tail lobe.
Sandy and silty bottoms in shallow lagoons and reef flats, to about 30 m.
Acoel and other small flatworms, swallowed whole.
