Winner of Invertebrate of the Year 2026 crowned – and it is the size of a grain of rice
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- The leaf sheep (Costasiella kuroshimae), a neon green sea slug about the size of a grain of rice, won the Guardian's Invertebrate of the Year 2026 after hundreds of thousands of global readers voted in a much tighter contest than previous years.
- The underwater slug lives in tropical waters around Japan, Indonesia and the Philippines, feeds on algae, and "harvests photosynthetic material" to build its own solar panels, broadcaster Chris Packham said while announcing the win.
- The runners-up were the moscardón (Bombus dahlbomii), the world's largest bumblebee and a threatened Patagonian native; the prehistoric horseshoe crab with its blue blood; and the common woodlouse, while the record-length bootlace worm finished 10th.
- Previous winners — the tardigrade and the common earthworm — both cruised to popular landslides, making this year's close race a notable shift in voter behavior.
- The leaf sheep was first described by science in 1993 and has since inspired at least one Pokémon character, thanks to advances in underwater macro photography revealing its beady-eyed charm.
- The Guardian's competition, launched three years ago, celebrates the roughly 1.7 million known invertebrate species — about 97% of all animal life — whose unpaid pollination, water filtration and waste recycling human survival depends on.
Why it matters: Invertebrates make up roughly 97% of animal species and quietly underpin human survival through crop pollination, water filtration and waste recycling, yet remain culturally overlooked; the Guardian's competition funnels hundreds of thousands of votes toward them, and a tighter race this year suggests broader public engagement with spineless creatures beyond perennial favorites like worms.
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