In the ancient heritage of legend and mythology, many unusual and fantastic creatures have been created, yet few real-life entities have been named after one of those from fiction.
Meet the blue dragon, one of the most stunning creatures on the earth. He’s a marine slug, to boot.
They may be a little smaller than their namesake cousins, reaching just over an inch in length when fully developed, but this species is no less dangerous. Blue dragons (Glaucus atlanticus) spend their lives floating upside down in warm ocean currents, using their wing-like appendages to strike their victims with a potent poison. Their sting is so powerful that it has been known to kill other poisonous marine species, such as the Portuguese man-of-war.
While humans are thought to seldom witness blue dragons, the magnificent, aggressive tiny mollusc was captured on video only last week after washing ashore on a beach in Queensland, Australia, providing a brief look of one of the planet’s most stunning creatures.