---
title: "Goose Barnacle (Lepas anatifera) | AnimalTracks.wiki"
description: "A crustacean that glues itself to driftwood, buoys and turtles and rides them across the open ocean."
image: "https://animaltracks.wiki/images/animals/goose-barnacle-1.webp"
published: "2026-10-11"
updated: "2026-10-11"
---
# Goose Barnacle (*Lepas anatifera*)
> **Status**: Checked against 8 sources, listed under Sources below.
> **Tagline**: A crustacean that glues itself to driftwood, buoys and turtles and rides them across the open ocean.
> **Soundtrack Vibe**: Trip-Hop & Velvet Downtempo // Air, "La femme d'argent"
> **Soundtrack Links**: [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/track/3ZzhV6JIDKWvWR7wiKWD0C)
> **Vibe Match**: It glues itself to driftwood, buoys and turtles and rides them across the open ocean. La femme d'argent does the same: a bassline that stays fixed while the keys and guitar drift over it.
## Biological Superpowers & Stats
- **Taxonomy**: *Lepas anatifera*
- **Danger Level**: Low
- **Conservation Status**: Not Evaluated ([IUCN Red List](https://www.iucnredlist.org/))
- **Superpower**: Makes a glue whose molecular adhesion differs from every other permanently gluing marine animal studied to date
- **Habitat**: Open ocean in most tropical and temperate seas, attached to floating objects
- **Diet**: Food filtered from the water, plus shrimp, polyps and young flying fish caught with its cirri
- **Tags**: crustacean, invertebrate, ocean, filter-feeder
## Natural History & Behavior
## Glue that breaks the rules
Barnacles are the only sessile crustaceans: they glue the base of their bodies to a surface. A goose barnacle does not move unless it is torn from that surface. It makes its glue in large single-cell glands, each 70 to 180 micrometres across.
Staining tests found that two chemicals, L-3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine and phosphoserine, are missing from the glue-making tissue. That showed barnacle glue works differently from that of every other permanently gluing marine animal studied to date. The researchers say the mechanisms that keep the glue liquid inside the body, and turn it into hard cement, appear to be unknown. This barnacle is also attached by a membranous base, while the other species examined before it have chalky baseplates.
## A raft rider with a built-in clock
*Lepas anatifera* is a pelagic barnacle, and pelagic means open ocean. It can be found attached to driftwood, bottles, boats, buoys, macroalgal rafts, and turtles. It lives in most tropical and temperate seas around the world, and it is most abundant where the water is warmer than 18 to 20 degrees Celsius. Its heart-shaped shell, the capitulum, can grow up to 5 cm long.
That size works as a clock. Researchers in the Maldives used the capitulum length of these barnacles, along with how much of a net was covered in growth, to estimate the minimum time eight ghost nets (lost fishing nets) had drifted: between 7.5 and 101 days. Barnacles on tarballs from Brazilian beaches measured 0.122 to 2.20 cm, which suggested the tarballs had been floating for at least a month. On litter stranded on two Moroccan Mediterranean beaches, almost all of it plastic, it was one of the most common fouling species.
> **The goose that came from a barnacle**
> The barnacle goose (*Branta leucopsis*) was once thought to start life as a goose barnacle because no one had ever seen its nest.
## Frilly legs, and a few enemies
The barnacle feeds with frills on its limbs called cirri, which it pushes out from between its shell plates. It filters currents, but it is also predatory, capturing prey (shrimp, polyps, young flying fish) with the cirri. A 1959 study of this species and one other gooseneck barnacle found both to be relatively unselective omnivores that at times behave like predatory carnivores. When large prey was available, the barnacles caught and handled it well.
Adults are protected by a shell but may still be eaten by gastropods, starfish and crabs. *Fiona pinnata*, a pelagic sea slug, is a known predator. The sea slug uses its jaws to grasp the barnacle near the junction of the stalk and shell, and then uses its radula, a tongue studded with tiny teeth, to rasp. The barnacle soon gapes open, allowing the sea slug to consume the prey.
Each barnacle is a hermaphrodite, yet it still needs a partner. Cross-fertilization is required, so the barnacles cluster in turfs close enough to mate. The young hatch as free-swimming larvae that go through six stages and then turn into a cyprid, a non-feeding stage that drifts until it finds something to settle on.
## Frequently Asked Questions
### Does a goose barnacle really turn into a goose?
No. People once believed the barnacle goose began life as one of these barnacles, because nobody had ever found the bird's nest. *(Source: [Animal Diversity Web, University of Michigan]())*
### How big is a goose barnacle?
Its shell, the capitulum, tops out at 5 cm, which is 50 mm. *(Source: [Animal Diversity Web, University of Michigan]())*
### What does a goose barnacle stick to?
Almost anything that floats: driftwood, bottles, boats, buoys, rafts of seaweed and turtles. It also turns up on fixed objects such as rocks and offshore structures. *(Source: [Animal Diversity Web, University of Michigan]())*
### Why is goose barnacle glue interesting to scientists?
Two chemicals, L-3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine and phosphoserine, did not show up in the tissue that makes it. That result showed barnacles stick at the molecular level in a different way from all other permanently gluing marine animals studied to date. *(Source: [Jonker et al. 2012]())*
## Sources
1. [Lepas anatifera (duck barnacle). Animal Diversity Web, University of Michigan.]()
2. [Jonker et al. (2012). Unusual adhesive production system in the barnacle Lepas anatifera: An ultrastructural and histochemical investigation. Journal of Morphology.]()
3. [Jonker et al. (2015). The chemistry of stalked barnacle adhesive (Lepas anatifera). Interface Focus.]()
4. [Domínguez-Pérez et al. (2021). Proteogenomic Characterization of the Cement and Adhesive Gland of the Pelagic Gooseneck Barnacle Lepas anatifera. International Journal of Molecular Sciences.]()
5. [Howard & Scott (1959). Predaceous Feeding in Two Common Gooseneck Barnacles. Science.]()
6. [Stelfox et al. (2020). Minimum drift times infer trajectories of ghost nets found in the Maldives. Marine Pollution Bulletin.]()
7. [Mello et al. (2023). Tarballs on the Brazilian coast in late 2022 sustain Lepas anatifera Linnaeus, 1758 (Crustacea: Cirripedia): Occurrence and risk of petroleum hydrocarbon ingestion. Science of The Total Environment.]()
8. [Mghili et al. (2022). Marine macroinvertebrates fouled in marine anthropogenic litter in the Moroccan Mediterranean. Marine Pollution Bulletin.]()
*Published October 11, 2026. Last updated October 11, 2026.*
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