🤔 🌱 The most likely hypothesis is that one of them reproduced asexually by 𝙞𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙗𝙪𝙙𝙙𝙞𝙣𝙜. A bit inside one anemone (a bud) basically detached in the internal cavity to form a new animal, that was then ejected by the mouth!! Isn’t it amazing?!

Asexual reproduction or cloning is actually a common ability of sea anemones!

🚻 🤰 They can also reproduce sexually. Even if it is likely that one animal here is a female and the other a male… it’s impossible to tell from the external morphology! Similarly to asexual reproduction, this species (Actinia equina or prasina) has an internal development and would give birth to live young and not larvae like other anemone species. And yes, that means they can be considered viviparous, which is much less common in invertebrates than in vertebrates!

👶⁉️ But in the case of sexual reproduction, I would guess that more than one baby would have been produced… Any thoughts? Another hypothesis?

🪸🪨 Sea anemones are often considered as sessile or fixed animals. And at the beginning, I would just realize that they regularly changed position overnight. I had no idea that they moved that much!

😴🕑 If you look continuously at them, their movements are so slow that they are almost unnoticeable to the human eye.

⏭️🦶 But accelerated x120 times like in this video, it becomes very clear! They first detach or “pop” the foot, usually firmly attached to the substrate, and then use waves of contractions to awkwardly “walk” or crawl around, until they find another suitable location to attach!