Talk:Barnacle

Barnacle has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Review: March 3, 2024. (Reviewed version).

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Anatomy and physiology paragraph

This paragraph states "Inside the carapace, the animal lies on its stomach, projecting its limbs downwards". For the life of me, I can't relate this to the nearby diagram of the anatomy of an adult barnacle, and I don't know what it's trying to tell me. Could someone with a knowledge of barnacle anatomy express this better? The same paragraph has a section on barnacle adhesion, which currently fails verification but also refers to pulling strength and sticking strength. It would be helpful to define what these are, as a google search didn't come up with anything. Elemimele (talk) 16:24, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Shrimps swim with their backs mainly uppermost, their legs used for swimming; we may imagine the legs "normally" pointing earthwards. Barnacles are like that but the other way up, and they're glued to the substrate. We can certainly rephrase the sentence. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:05, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes that's exactly what bothered me about it. If I imagine a shrimp, if it was lying on its stomach projecting its feet downwards, it would be doing exactly what a shrimp normally does, and nothing like a barnacle! I imagine a barnacle as lying on its back with its limbs pointing upwards, compared to a shrimp. The only way I can make sense of lying on its stomach is either if it's got a weirdly wrapped-round body, or if its limbs project upwards from its body, the opposite way round to a shrimp. Either explanation needs clarification. I just don't know enough about crustacean development to know which is correct. The diagram doesn't help as it doesn't show what's supposed to be the animal's stomach. It's difficult to express these things! Elemimele (talk) 09:03, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I like your changes, thanks! Elemimele (talk) 09:21, 16 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]