Blind to their own beauty

Peep the toxic nudibranchs (the naughty sounding official term for these soft, outer-worldly colored, hermaphroditic sea slugs!). They produce a truly brilliant defense. With more than 3,000 species painting nearly all depths of salt water, their unique anatomy allows them to easily exercise some cryptic behavior and camo into textures and colors of surrounding sea plants. Others don't mind shining and instead utilize their vivid coloring to show predators they are oh so poisonious thangs. Too bad we don't have the same defensive mechanisms. For me, unfortunately, it's called riding the mood swing. They are even "blind to their own beauty" with "their tiny eyes discerning little more than light and dark. Instead the animals smell, taste, and feel their world using head-mounted sensory." Here's something we don't get to appreciate everyday -- this stunning National Geographic photo/video gallery on these bad ass sea creatures.

It's no surprise either that the seriously prolific artist and naturalist (among other things) Ernst Haeckel tried to capture these beauties in his Artforms in Nature studies. If you don't know Haeckel, be prepared to have your mind officially blown. His jellyfish and coral renderings are my favorite!