About 2,100 species of marine crustaceans related to crabs and lobsters. Adults stay fixed in one place for life, cemented to rocks, ships or whales, and most sweep plankton into their shells with feathery legs. Barnacles have existed for at least 325 million years.
Quick answers
What is it?Crustacean
Carnivore?Omnivore
Dangerous?No
Domesticated?No
Awake when?Day & night
Hibernates?No
Kept as a pet?No
Do people eat it?In places
Goose barnacles and the Chilean giant barnacle are fished and eaten.
At a glance
Found inOceans
HabitatCoast, Open ocean
ColoursWhite, Grey
SizeTiny
Legs12
Covered inShell
Lives incolonies
Lives for5–20 years
Lays eggs
In the wild
- Where it lives
- Oceans worldwide; most live in shallow water, a quarter of species in the intertidal zone.
- What it eats
- Plankton and detritus drawn in by the feathery legs (cirri); some are parasites of crabs or sharks.
Did you know
Glues its own head to the rock and spends its life kicking food into its mouth.
Relative to body size, barnacles have the longest penis of any animal, up to eight times their body length.
In folklore, barnacle geese were once thought to hatch from goose barnacles.
Often confused with
On these lists
Sources
Last reviewed
Play
Could you have guessed it?
A photo, a few hints, one guess. Same 438 animals.
