You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Snail’ tag.
This is Danilia octaviana, a tiny marine gastropod of the family Chilodontidae (the mollusk family Chilontidae—because of a taxonomic mishap, there is apparently a fish family of the same name). Danilia octaviana throughout the Mediterranean Sea (and in the Atlantic near the mouth of the Mediterranean). It is a tiny snail. Adults measure between 7 and 11 millimeters (about a third of an inch). It scrapes up algae and microscopic plants and bacteria with its radula, and is in turn eaten by numerous predators of all different stamps. There is nothing remarkable about Danilia octaviana: there are thousands of small snails like it which live at the margin of our attention (although that perhaps is remarkable, in its own way). Based on information on the internet, is a bit unclear whether the snail is currently alive or not (the photo above makes it seem like it is a fossil, but some sources speak about it today). I post it here because I think it is surprisingly beautiful and interesting as a textured sculptural whirl.
Snailovation (photo by @seaville)
Last September (2013) Sydney Australia was the location of “Snailovation” a massive public art project featuring 24 giant fluorescent snail sculptures made of recycled plastic. The event was meant to highlight the importance of ecological consciousness (and, of course, to raise awareness of gastropods—and mollusks in general). According to Weekendnotes.com “The gargantuan gastropods were created by international artistic collective Cracking Art Group whose members include William Sweetlove, Renzo Nucara, Marco Veronese, Kicco, Alex Angi and Carlo Rizetti.” I’m sorry I didn’t notice this story in time for you to get to Sydney and check out the huge plastic snails—which came down last October—but you can still enjoy the amazing photos!
Cracking Artgroup Facebook
It’s movie time here at Ferrebeekeeper! Tonight we are reviewing the DreamWorks animated children’s film “Turbo” which concerns Theo, a humble snail who lives in a garden in the San Fernando Valley. Despite the fact that snails are renowned for being slow and cautious, Theo dreams of blazing speed and obsessively follows Indy Car racing (particularly idolizing the French Canadian champion, Guy Gagné, whose legendary racing prowess is matched by an oversized personality).
I like gardening better than car racing so some of this was lost on me
The humdrum reality of Theo’s slow-paced life as a lowly “worker” in a vegetable garden seems to preclude him from following his dreams of speedway glory…but after he is cast out of snail society he undergoes a fateful magical (?) transformation and is reborn as Turbo, a supercharged snail capable of blazing speed. Will Turbo be able to find a way into the human world of high speed car racing? Can he make it to Indianapolis and compete in the big race? Could he even maybe win? People who have ever seen a children’s movie may somehow anticipate the answers to these burning questions (and guess that the French Canadian Gagné is less likable than he first seems), but I will try not to spoil the movie for the one person who is somehow both reader of my blog and looking forward to watching a children’s movie which came out last July.
(Dreamworks)
In fact devoted readers may be somewhat surprised to find this blog reviewing a children’s movie–or indeed any movie—since the cinematic art has barely been featured here at all; yet Ferrebeekeeper is deeply concerned with mollusks, and Theo/Turbo is unique in being the mollusk hero of a major Hollywood motion picture (and a spinoff television show on Netflix). Additionally, although I found the movie to be a typical work of rags-to-riches whimsy for children, I enjoyed its message about the narrow and chancy ladders to fame and riches which exist for the little guy. Turbo finds a Chicano taco-shop worker who helps the snail find social media fame (which in turn allows him to pursue further ambitions). The crazy world of internet celebrity is the real turbo-boost which elevates the tiny abject creature to the rarified realms of status and importance. It seems significant that when Theo transforms to Turbo he is shown bouncing through the terrifying and incomprehensible labyrinth of a high tech machine he does not understand at all.
Stereotypes? In an animated movie? Nah…
The movie is most touching when it features the sundry immigrant shopkeepers who inhabit a run down strip mall where they dream simply of having customers. The filmmakers add some colorful urban Angelino snails (tricked out with customized shells) to give the movie some hip-hop “cred”, but it is obviously a movie about trying to compete in a world where the real contenders are playing in a vastly different league. The only aspect of mollusk existence which seemed true to life was the ever-present fear of being crushed or gobbled up (since Turbo and his snail friends are continuously and realistically threatened with being smashed by monopolistic giants and high speed machines).
Aaaaagh!
I love animated movies and so I am giving Turbo a (very generous) rating of 3.5 shells out of a possible 5. Although the movie was colorful, well animated, and fun, it was much less involved with the bizarre and amazing world of mollusks than it might have been. It was almost as though the snail was a whimsical stand-in for omnipresent economic concerns about globalization. Also the 3D stuff did not work at all. Hollywood, stop featuring 3D! It is a horrible horrible feature which everyone hates!
A Giant Triton (Charonia tritonis) on an Indonesian Reef
Yesterday this blog took us to the depths of space to explore the frozen ice-moon of Triton. Today we atone for that cold voyage with a trip to the inviting tropical seas of the Indo-Pacific. In these vibrant waters can be found one of the greatest living gastropods, a prince among predatory sea snails, the mighty Charonia tritonis, (commonly known as the giant triton or Triton’s trumpet).
A Giant Triton climbs over a pillow coral in Hawaii
Charonia tritonis grows to over half a meter (20 inches) in length: it is one of the largest living snails in the world (and it is not much smaller than the biggest extant snails). Equipped with a powerful muscular foot, acute senses (particularly smell), and an agile tentacle-like proboscis, the snails are formidable hunters. Additionally they are protected from predators—even big fierce ones–by their beautiful spiral shells which are vibrantly colored orange, brown, yellow, and cream. Of course such a shell would become a liability for the snail if an animal ever evolved which killed the snails in order to harvest the magnificent shells solely for their beauty (but what are the chances of that?).
A man sounds a blast on a triton shell–which has spiritual significance in Hawaii
Giant tritons hunt at night. Their main prey are echinoderms—starfish, which can be large powerful and armored. Fortunately the snails are not just equipped with powerful muscles and superior brains. They also have salivary glands that produce sulfuric acid AND a chemical which paralyzes starfish. The tritons find starfish—even big spiny poisonous starfish like the invasive and all-consuming crown-of-thorns which bedevils the reefs of the Indo-Pacific—then hold them down and inject saliva into them. As the starfish dissolves from within, the snails rip them apart and feast!
A triton kills a crown of thorns
Tritons have a specific gender—they are male or female. They seek each other out for courtship and the female then lays a large clutch of eggs. When the eggs hatch, the young snails become part of the oceanic plankton for a (poorly understood) time before developing into adults. Triton shells are esteemed by many cultures as sacred musical instruments. The shells themselves are collector’s items and are arguably better known then the formidable long-lived predators which make them. Although the snails are not threatened with extinction as such, there are fewer and fewer really big adult ones (or even small ones) on today’s reefs. This is a real shame, since those same reefs are being devoured by the horrible crown-of-thorns. Hopefully a new generation of divers and wildlife enthusiasts will appreciate the triton on the reef and leave them to their invaluable hunting. Resist the urge to buy the beautiful shells and help save the reefs of the Indo Pacific!
Japanese Bonnet Snail (Phalium/Semicassis bisulcata)
The helmet and bonnet snails (Cassidae) are slow moving hunters which live along sandy coasts in the tropics and subtropics. Depending on the species (of which tere are approximately 60), these sea snails live anywhere from the intertidal zone to a depth of 100 meters. During the day they bury themselves in the sand and at night they emerge to hunt their favorite prey—echinoderms (particularly sea urchins).
A Horned Helmet (Cassis cornuta) from the Hawaii coast
Most of the Cassidae are large snails with big mantles and heavy, muscular foot. They see by means of two eyes located at the base of a single pair of head tentacles and they use an extensible tube for smelling.
A helmet snail closes in on a sea urchin (image from wannadivekona.com)
When a helmet snail catches a tasty echinoderm, the snail immobilizes its prey by holding the smaller animal within its mighty foot and releasing a paralytic enzyme from its salivary gland (which prevents urchins from using their spikes in self-defense). The snail has a sharpened radula (an organ which consists of a chitinous tongue-like strip covered with razor sharp teeth) and two proboscis glands which produce a secretion rich in sulfuric acid. Using the combination of radula and acid, the helmet snail bores a hole in the echinoderm’s armored body and devours the creature from within!
Shells from the Cassidae family (from OuterBanksShells.com)
The shells of helmet snails are frequently large and beautiful. Shaped like a heavy helmet, these shells consist of dextral (right sided) coils which whorl outward from a tight spiral spire. The snails are divided into males and females (unlike many mollusks which are hermaphrodites or swap genders) and the females lay large masses of hundreds of eggs which can either hatch into planktonic free swimmers or into miniature crawling snails—depending on the species. Some Cassidae are prized by shell-hunters and artisans such as Cypraecassis rufa, a snail from the coast of Southeast Africa which is favored by cameo carvers.
Bullmouth Helmet Shell (Cypraecassis rufa) from the store “Evolution”
Hey! It’s the flag of Irsael: a blue Star of David on a white background between two blue stripes. What’s the story with all of that blue anyway? Well, like most stories involving Judaism, the story goes back a long, long way to the Holy Temple of Jerusalem, where the high priests wore a robe dyed a deep midnight blue. In fact, this color, known as tekhelet, was a sacred color which appeared in temple hangings and in the twined fringes known as tzitzit which hang from the corners of Jewish prayer shawls.
A High Priest with Tekhelet Robe
The Tanahk (the sacred books of Judaism) are pretty specific about tekhelet. It is mentioned nearly 50 times and it is specifically and explicitly stated that the special blue dye must be made from a shellfish called chilazon (rather than from the less expensive indigo). And so it was for many lives of men. Unfortunately everything went wrong in the first and second centuries AD when the Roman Empire destroyed the temple, defeated a Jewish revolt and exiled Jews from Jerusalem. During this period of chaos and diaspora, the fine nuances of dyes were not of tantamount importance, and the way to make tekhelet were lost as was knowledge of exactly what sort of mollusk a chilazon actually is.
Oh, also, during travel, the Ark of the Covenant was supposed to be covered in a cloth of tekhelet
The Talmud demands that tekhelet be used for crafting the fringes of prayer shawls and it stipulates that counterfeit dyes must not be (knowingly) used. This has left devout Jews with a conundrum as to how to proceed. Since the Roman exile, Orthodox Jews have most commonly setteld plain white tzitzit, however there have also been several attempts to rediscover the mysterious chilazon and recreate tekhelet. In the late nineteenth century the Grand Rabbi Gershon Henoch Leiner researched the subject and proclaimed that the common cuttlefish, Sepia officinalis, was the missing mollusk. The dye he created, however, did not seem to fit Talmudic descriptions and chemists later determined it was simply Prussian blue (although the holy man proudly wore his blue fringes, as did many of his followers).
Common cuttlefish – Sepia officinalis (photo by David Nicholson)
Hexaplex trunculus
Another Talmudic scholar cross referenced his ancient religious text with modern malacology texts and concluded that the chilazon was actually Hexaplex trunculus, a murex snail which is a close relative of Murex brandaris (the source of Tyrian purple). The dye which he created from the secretions of Hexaplex trunculus was also purple and thus did not seem to fit the bill. Only with the help of a chemist in the 1980s was it determined that the proper blue color could be obtained by exposing a solution of the snail slime dye to sunlight. So if you are an orthodox Jew (or a high priest of the Temple) you might want to look into getting some tekhelet clothing.
Actual Tekhelet dyed wool (probably…)
(Picture: AFP/Getty Images)
Every day, major news outlets pick up a few trivial “offbeat” stories in order to pad out the international mayhem, barely concealed commercials, punditry, and celebrity gossip which constitutes the news. One such puff-piece in the news today features the story of a spa in Tokyo which is offering snail facials. Apparently credulous yet affluent Japanese women can pay to have snails crawl on their face for approximately an hour. The snails are fed on organic carrots and greens so that their mucous–and whatever else passes out of them–will be, well, organic.
There is a rationale behind this wacky beauty regime. Snail slime contains hyaluronans (aka hyaluronic acids), long unbranched polysaccharides found in animal tissues which promote healing and flexibility. Hyaluronans have been found to play a major role in wound healing and it is a major component of cartilage and skin (they are also implicated in the prevention of cancer—and malfunction of hyaluronan-producing cells is likewise implicated in cancerous mutagenesis). Cash-seeking dermatologists have long used hyaluronan as a “filler” to inject into skin to minimize the appearance of wrinkles and as a relatively inert ingredient in their creams and unguents, however recently hyaluronans made the news in an even bigger way with a fascinating, albeit erudite article about the longevity of naked mole rats. You can read the actual research abstract here, but ABC News more concisely summarizes the possible implications of the research by writing, “Last month, researchers at the University of Rochester wrote that naked mole rats’ super-long hyaluronan molecule actually tells cells to stop reproducing, which is why they think naked mole rats don’t get cancer.”
Heterocephalus glaber: The naked mole-rat
Unfortunately, whatever actual importance hyaluronans have in the human body (and whatever importance super long hyaluronans have for the doughty naked mole rat), it does not seem that being coated in snail mucous necessarily has much benefit. Dermatologists aver that, as the snail slime (which may be of dubious benefit anyway) simply lies on top of the dead waterproof dermis, it cannot have much if any magic mole-rat age-reducing effect. That still doesn’t deter desperate people who let gastropods crawl all over their face in a quest for eternal youth.
El Yunque Tropical Rain Forest in Puerto Rico
Long-time readers know that I love trees. So you can imagine how thrilled I was this past weekend, when, for the first time, I visited a tropical rainforest–El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico. The only tropical rainforest under the rubric of the United States Forest Department, El Yunque is a very gentle jungle: not only does it lack poisonous snakes or spiders, but there are not even any endemic mammals other than bats (although mongooses have crept in, thanks to a misguided introduction program long ago) and no predators larger than hawks. What it lacks in large violent animals, El Yunque makes up for with astonishing botanical diversity. Immense tree ferns tower over volcanic boulders. Delicate Coquís—tree frogs which are the unofficial mascot of Puerto Rico–sing beneath the umbrella-like leaves of Cecropia trees. The mollusks, that great strange phylum, exist in proliferation which rivals a coastline or an oyster reef. Transparent slugs with green nuclei are virtually invisible on stones. Snails the size of children’s hands hang in the branches.
Gaeotis flavolineata, a transparent semi-slug (image credit: exotiskadjur.ifokus.se)
A Tree Snail at El Yunque
Among the flowers, frogs, and fruitbats, there are ancient giants–just not animal ones. The most beautiful tree I saw in the rainforest was an Ausubo (Manikara bidentata) a huge, slow-growing evergreen tree rising magnificently 10 stories above the forest floor. The wood of ausubo is coveted by builders and carpenters since it is lovely to look at, rock hard, and resistant to rot and insects (the sap can also be formed into a hard resin like gutta-percha: this material, called gutta-balatá, was used to make golf balls for professional golfers until it was replaced by modern synthetics). Ausubo was once the most important timber tree in Puerto Rico and many of the great colonial buildings feature great halls made of mighty ausubo timbers now hundreds of years old. Today, sadly few large, ancient trees remain. However the forest service has planted great stands of them in El Yunque and some originals still remain like the one pictured below which a sign asserted was three to four hundred years old. It is strange to think that the tree (which is broader at the base than a person is tall) was once a tiny seed dropped by a fruit bat or a bird. It has outlasted all of the lumberjacks and hurricanes since San Juan was little more than a fort above a colonial village.
Ausubo (Manilkara bidentata), the titular big tree of “Big Tree” trail in El Yunque (photo by Xemenendura)
Melo Pearl
The world’s rarest and most precious pearls do not come from oysters, but instead from very large sea snails of the species Melo melo. Melo melo snails lives in the tropical waters of southeast Asia and range from Burma down around Malysia and up into the Philippines. The snails are huge marine gastropods which live by hunting other smaller snails along the shallow underwater coasts of the warm Southeast Asia seas.
Melo melo snail (Melo melo)
Melo melo is a very lovely snail with a smooth oval shell of orange and cream and with zebra stripes on its soft body. The shell lacks an operculum (the little lid which some snails use to shut their shells) and has a round apex as opposed to the more normal spiral spike. This gives the Melo melo snail’s shell a very aerodynamic lozenge-like appearance (although living specimens look more like alien battlecraft thanks to the large striped feet and funnels). The animals grow to be from 15 to 35 centimeters in length (6 inches to a foot) although larger specimens have been reported. The shell is known locally as the bailer shell because fishermen use the shells to bail out their canoes and small boats.
Melo melo at Birmingham’s National Sea Life Centre (with keeper)
Melo pearls form only rarely on the snails and are due to irritating circumstances unknown to science. No cultivation mechanism exists (which explains the astronomically high prices). A single large melo pearl can sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars or more in Asia. The pearls are usually egg-shaped or oval (although perfectly round specimens are known) and they can measure up to 20-30mm in diameter. Not nacreous (like pearls from oysters & abalones), these valuable objects have a porcelain-like transparent shine. Melo pearls are brown, cream, flesh, and orange (with the brighter orange colors being most valuable).
Melo pearls with Melo melo shell
Apart from the fact that they come from a large orange predatory sea snail, what I like most about melo pearls is the extent to which they evoke the celestial. It is hard not to look at the shining ovals and orbs without thinking of the sun, Mars, Makemake, and Haumea. Rich jewelry aficionados of East Asia, India, and the Gulf states must agree with me. It is difficult to conceive of paying the price of a nice house for a calcium carbon sphere from an irritated/diseased snail, unless such pearl spoke of unearthly beauty and transcendent longing.
Marbled cone snail (Conus marmoreus) by shadowshador
In olden days, in Australia, young healthy beachgoers were sometimes found lying on the shore dead. Their bodies gave no evidence of trauma, indeed they had not even gone into the water. Something just struck them down as they sauntered along the beach. It was not until 1936 that the mysterious killer was finally revealed when a beachcomber picked up a colorful snail and began to scrape its shell with his knife. The unlucky young man uttered a cry as the snail somehow pricked him. He then fell down, went into a coma, and shortly died. Because of witness testimony, coroners knew what to look for and they removed a tiny poisonous harpoon the size of a small hair from the victim’s hand. The culprit turned out to be a cone snail, one of a diverse group of deadly gastropod mollusks.
The Geographic Cone Snail (Conus geographus) shows its siphon and proboscis. This snail is also humorously called “the cigarette snail” since if one stings you, you allegedly have time for one cigarette before dying.
There are over 600 different species of snail within the genus Conus and they are all poisonous predatory hunters. The smaller cone snails hunt tiny mollusks and worms but the larger snails feed on fish, which need to be quickly subdued (so that they do not injure the snail by thrashing about) and then consumed with equal dispatch so that other ocean creatures do not steal the meal. In order to quickly dispatch their prey (and defend against larger predators), Cone snails have a sophisticated weapon–a modified radula tooth which directly injects potent venom by means of a tiny harpoon-like “dart.” The snail finds prey by carefully testing/sniffing the water with a siphon. It then stretches out a long flexible proboscis and fires the disposable hollow radula tooth (filled with venom) into the prey by means of a powerful muscle contraction. Below is a shocking film which shows a cone snail killing and consuming a clown fish by such means. It is not for the faint of heart!
Although cone snails are obviously alarming to divers and shell collectors (particularly in warm tropical reefs where the large poisonous specimens live), the potent cocktail of neurotoxins utilized by the creatures is of great interest to pharmaceutical researchers. Since each species of cone snail has a very large number of different “conotoxins” in its poison, scientists have been struggling to catalog and understand the dangerous mixtures. These conotoxins are generally peptides which interfere with the ability of nerve cells to communicate with one another. Not only might such chemicals provide the key to curing neurodegenerative diseases and brain cancers, conotoxin research is now the most promising avenue towards effective medications to deal with certain sorts of chronic pain.
A lovely diagram of Conotoxin Peptides from “The Journal of Neuroscience”
Unfortunately all of this research has not provided any effective antitoxins for victims of cone snail stings. If a person is fully darted by one of the large poisonous specimens, their best hope is to go on a ventilator until their body expunges all of the poison—an uncertain prospect at best.
A Tiny Sample of the Exquisite Variety of Cone Snail Shells (Photo by Pet/Wikimedia Commons)
Many cone snails have beautiful colorful shells marked with vivid abstract patterns. Some of the most valuable shells ever came from cone snails–which continue to fascinate conchologists and shell collectors. Even today divers and beach combers are sometimes overwhelmed by the beauty of cone snails and reach out to grab the lovely creatures. Hopefully this article has convinced you that doing so is a very bad idea.
ferrebeekeeper 