Marine crustaceans that attach permanently to hard surfaces like rocks, ship hulls, or whale skin. They feed by filtering plankton from seawater using feathery appendages.
From Old French 'bernaque', possibly from Medieval Latin 'bernaca'. Originally applied to barnacle geese due to a medieval belief that these geese hatched from barnacles rather than eggs, since their breeding grounds were unknown.
Barnacles were once thought to spontaneously generate geese, leading to one of history's most charming misconceptions about reproduction. These creatures are actually some of nature's strongest glue-makers - their cement is so powerful that scientists study it to develop new adhesives for underwater use.
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