☀️ eats algae · runs on sunlight 🐌

SOLR

A bright green sea slug eats algae but keeps their tiny sunlight-catching parts alive inside its own body. Now it can live on sunlight, like a leaf.

you're the sun · move to shine on the slug · click to drop some algae

In the shallows

A leaf that crawls.

Look closely at this green leaf on the seafloor. It has a head, two little horns and it's moving. It's a sea slug, and it's about to do something amazing.

Lunch time

It eats algae.

The slug pokes into long strands of green algae and sucks out the insides, like slurping juice through a straw.

The trick

It keeps the sun-catchers.

Instead of digesting everything, the slug keeps the algae's tiny green sun-catchers and spreads them through its body. Scientists call it “kleptoplasty”: stealing chloroplasts.

Solar power

Now it runs on sunlight.

When the sun shines, the slug opens up like a leaf. The stolen sun-catchers turn light into sugar, and the slug lives on it.

Patience

Months without a meal.

With enough sunshine, this slug can go for months without eating anything at all. An animal that lives like a plant.

solar sea slug

tap the scene

Fill up with light

Watch it charge up.

Scroll to fill the slug's body with green sun-catchers, then bring up the sun. The more it stores, the brighter it glows.

0sun-catchers stored

0%solar charge

An empty slug. Time for lunch.

Try it yourself

Feed it, then shine.

Tap the algae on the seafloor so the slug can eat. Then drag the sun across the sky. Shine right on the slug and watch it open up, glow and charge.

0algae eaten

0sun-catchers

0%charge

Small slug, big ideas

Stranger than fiction.

Stolen solar panels

The slug keeps the algae's chloroplasts, the little green parts that turn sunlight into food. Plants have them. Animals almost never do.

A leaf with a face

Its flat green body even has leaf-like veins. Lying on the seafloor, it looks just like a leaf that fell in the water.

Months on sunshine

The eastern emerald elysia can keep its stolen chloroplasts working for months, living mostly on light.

A head that grows a body

Scientists found that some solar sea slugs can drop their body and regrow a whole new one from just the head.

Mini game · 30 seconds

Chase the light.

Sunbeams dance across the seafloor. Tap or drag to guide your slug into the light. Stay in the sun to charge up, and watch out for clouds.

0sunshine

30seconds

0your best

Tap Start. Then tap where you want the slug to go.

Real solar sea slugs

Meet the sun eaters.

leaf green

Eastern emerald elysia

The famous one. Lives in salt marshes and can run on sunlight for months.

ruffles

Lettuce sea slug

Covered in frilly folds that look like a head of lettuce, packed with sun-catchers.

tiny + cute

Leaf sheep

A slug the size of a grain of rice, with green leaves on its back and a little face.

orange trim

Margined elysia

A green slug with a bright orange and dark edge. Famous for regrowing its body from its head.

waiting for sun

You

Name your slug at the end of the page.

One eats. One shines. Together they live on light. A slug that runs on sunshine. That's $SOLR.

The live solar meter

Charge with every block.

Name your slug and let it soak up the sun. With every new Solana block the solar meter fills a little more. When it hits 100%, your slug banks a full sun day.

0%solar meter

0Solana blocks since you arrived

not yetyour slug started soaking

0sun days banked