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I am a barnacle.
My scientific name is Pollicipes Cornucopia.
My body is a fleshy stalk which is attached to a rock at its base.
The rest is inside a kind of nail.
Barnacles live forming huge colonies, in places where the waves break hard.
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We are hermaphrodites: each specimen has male and female sex organs; sometimes we act as males, and sometimes as females.
To breed, a barnacle acting as a male introduces its penis into another barnacle.
This one will incubate the eggs inside its body.
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When they are born, larvae swim freely until they can segregate a kind of cement with which they can affix themselves to the rocks.
Barnacles moult as all the other crustacean. We do it while growing up.
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People use knives to remove us from the rocks.
Catching barnacles is very dangerous.
Should be done in groups of four or five people, and always from inside a boat.
People catch us when they need money. There are some who die while doing it, as they don´t realise how dangerous the sea can be.
Poachers catch us when we are breeding, that is, when it is forbidden.
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We are cooked in boiling salted water, or even seawater.
People say we are the most precious seafood in the market.
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