Can eating lots of vegetables turn you into a vegetable?
Not really, unless you are a sea slug.
But these sea slugs werent born with chlorophyll.
They acquired them during their lifetime by eating too many veggies.
Now all they have to do is lie in the sun.
A young elysia chlorotica is reddish or greyish in color.
Once they start feeding and retaining chloroplasts in the cells, they turn bright green.
Anelysia chloroticacan live off photosynthesis without feeding for up to a year.
However, a chloroplast is only one part of the cellular machinery thats necessary to turn sunlight into energy.
Merely possessing the chloroplast without the necessary genes responsible for photosynthesis wont allow the animal to synthesize food.
Its like taking the blades off a blender and expecting it to make carrot juice without the motor.
This is a fascinating and rather unique instance of horizontal gene transfer.
This species is found in Ryukyu Islands, in Japan.
