Umbrella slug
Amazing fact
The umbrella slug often has plants and other animals growing on its shell.
Australian Museum
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An illustration based on the real animal.
A little discovery to share.
The umbrella slug often has plants and other animals growing on its shell.
THE REAL WORLD
The real Umbrella slug
- Scientific name
- Umbraculum umbraculum
- Japanese name
- ヒトエガイ
- Group
- Ocean animals
- Class
- Gastropoda
- Order
- Umbraculida
- Family
- Umbraculidae
- Genus
- Umbraculum
It has a flat, umbrella-shaped shell, and its soft body is very large compared with the shell.
How the Umbrella slug lives
Its tentacles sense chemical traces of food in the water. It opens the cleft at the front of its body and presses its mouth against a sponge to feed. Even when it crawls, its body does not stretch out.
Solitary Islands Underwater Research GroupAustralian MuseumBasic data
- Range
- Tropical and temperate seas around the Pacific and the Mediterranean Sea
Where the Umbrella slug has been recorded
Records: GBIF.org (CC0 and CC BY 4.0 records, retrieved 2026-11-07). Map: Natural EarthSee the records on GBIF
Watch wild animals from a distance. Do not touch or feed them, and take care of the places where they live.
Names around the world
- 日本語
- ヒトエガイ
- 简体中文
- 中华伞螺
- 繁體中文
- 中華傘螺
- 한국어
- 삿갓군소붙이
- Español
- Umbraculum sinicum
- Français
- Ombrelle
- Deutsch
- Padiglione
- Italiano
- Umbracolo
- Русский
- Улитка-зонтик
Names come from Wikidata and iNaturalist records. Where a language has no recorded name, we use the scientific name.
Sources and how we check
- 鳥羽水族館 — ヒトエガイChecked: 2026-11-04
- Australian Museum — Umbraculum umbraculumChecked: 2026-11-07
- Solitary Islands Underwater Research Group — Umbraculum umbraculum (Lightfoot, 1786)Checked: 2026-11-07
We check each fact against its source. The illustrations simplify how the real animal looks.
The classification (class, order, family, genus) follows Wikidata records, checked against GBIF. Classifications can change as research goes on.
The basic data are the values given in each source. They vary with how the animal is measured, whether it is male or female, and whether it lives in the wild or in captivity.
This page was translated from the original Japanese with the help of AI.
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