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Photo: Bobbi Zimmerman/AP
Forget zombie invasion! There's something scarier attacking Miami, Florida, slowly right now. Reeeeal slow. Behold the invasion of the Giant African Land Snails:
Read more over at NPR's All Things Considered: LinkThey can grow to be 10 inches long. They leave a slimy trail of excrement wherever they go. They harbor the microscopic rat-lung worm, which can transmit meningitis to humans. And they will literally eat your house.
"They'll attach to the side of the house and eat the stucco off the side of the house," Gaskalla says. The snails are also attracted to garbage and pet food that's been left out.
Animals use a lot of things to defend themselves: skunks use bad odor, armadillos use their tough leathery armor shell, and porcupines use their sharp quills.
But scientists studying the clusterwink snail have discovered what could be the strangest defensive weapon used by an animal: light.
Dimitri Deheyn and Nerida Wilson of Scripps Oceanography (Wilson is now at the Australian Museum in Sydney) studied a species of "clusterwink snail," a small marine snail typically found in tight clusters or groups at rocky shorelines. These snails were known to produce light, but the researchers discovered that rather than emitting a focused beam of light, the animal uses its shell to scatter and spread bright green bioluminescent light in all directions.
The researchers, who describe their findings in the Dec. 15 online version of Proceedings of the Royal Society B (Biological Sciences), say the luminous displays of Hinea brasiliana could be a deterrent to ward off potential predators by using diffused bioluminescent light to create an illusion of a larger animal.
See also: 10 of the Most Bizarre Animal Defense Mechanisms over at WebEcoist
Minnesotastan found a strange photograph on a Japanese site with no information. Commenters looked around and suggested this is “sausage jelly”, which is the egg case of the snail Polinices sordidus, commonly called the sordid sand snail or moon snail. Other photographs of sausage jelly do not show the eggs as hatched. Have you ever seen anything like this? Link
The scaly-foot gastropod (Crysomallon squamiferum) is one badass deep sea snail. Not only does it live in the foot of black smokers at the Kairei hydrothermal vent field, with temperatures reaching 725 °F, it is also tough as nails (snails, nails, get it?)
Now, scientists have figured out why their exoskeleton is so tough: it’s got iron.
Crysomallon squamiferum was discovered back in 1999, over two miles below the central Indian Ocean, deep within hydrothermal vent fields. Fluids in these vents are high in sulfides and metals, which the snail incorporates into its shell. The gastropod’s shell has three layers: a highly calcified inner layer, a thick organic middle layer, and an outer layer that is fused with granular iron sulfide. It is unlike any other known natural or synthetically engineered armor.
Naturally, the military is interested in how to turn it into armor technology: Link – via collision detection
A tree snail found in the tropical forest near Cairns, Australia has been named after the late Steve Irwin. Dr. John Stanisic of the Queensland Museum named it Crikey steveirwini.
The scientist described Crikey steveirwini as “a colourful snail, with swirling bands of creamy yellow, orange-brown and chocolate giving the shell an overall khaki appearance”.
“It was the khaki colour that immediately drew the connection to the late Crocodile Hunter,” Dr Stanisic said.
Ever wish that itsy bitsy crab you had for dinner were bigger, so that you could eat more of one instead of ordering another dish? Why not order a coconut crab, a Tasmanian giant crab or a Japanese spider crab? Who knows, with 13 ft of crab to deal with, you might not even be able to finish it all!
(Also available: escargot So big, you can’t even wrap your hands around it.)
This article over at Cracked also features jellyfish, spiders, worms and other creepy crawlies you would love to see magnified.
Puppies, kittens, infants: All adorable. And do you know why? Because they’re tiny. If you start to magnify these things, then you wind up with the substantially less cute wolves, jaguars and teenagers.
Yes, if there’s one thing nature teaches us, it’s that what may start out as an adorable little animal friend can quickly turn into a Lovecraftian horror when its itty-bitty wittle mouth gets big enough to start eating your face. And when the little versions are already a little bit creepy, the big versions are the stuff nightmares are made of.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by Silver.
Why are snails so slow? Roberto Nespolo and Paulina Artacho of the Southern University of Chile may have the answer: turns out, evolution favors slower snails because they are more energy efficient.
Testing the biological hypothesis of the “energetic definition of fitness,” which purports that the less energy an animal spends, the more it will have for survival and reproduction, the researchers measured the size and standard metabolic rate (the amount of energy required for maintenance) of nearly 100 garden snails. After seven months, the researchers found that surviving snails had a metabolic rate 20 percent lower than that of the dead snails—and no correlation between snail size and rate of survival.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by philosophile.
The geographic cone snail is nicknamed the "cigarette" because if you’re stung by one of these, you have about enough time to smoke one cigarette before you die. It’s an exaggeration: there have only been a few human deaths attributed to this six-inch snail, but its venom has the power to paralyze a fish instantly. The venom has to work fast because the cone snail moves slowly, and a slow-acting venom would allow its prey to escape.
Ironically, the complex venom in this small snail has huge possibilities for painkilling drugs. Certain proteins in the venom can target specific human pain receptors and can be up to 10,000 times more powerful than morphine, without morphine’s dangerous side effects.
Photograph by Kerry Matz, National Geographic
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Marilyn Terrell.
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