Part 52 in my series of cute and improbable animals, meet the leaf sheep.
You probably guessed that it's not a sheep at all. In fact, it's a kind of tiny sea slug (about the size of a gain of rice), Latin name costasiella kurashimae. It lives in shallow tropical waters near Japan, Indonesia and the Philippines.
Unusually, it absorbs chloroplasts from algae and uses sunlight to generate energy in a process similar to photosynthesis (actually called kleptoplasty). It is also a hermaphrodite, possessing both male and female reproductive organs, although it does need another leaf sheep in order to reproduce.
Most of all, though, it is impossibly cute, with those tiny cartoon eyes, little horns and succulent-luke leaves branching off its back.
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