Art is everywhere you look in nature, whether it’s in the form of spiraling humpback whale bubble nets or, as a group of researchers studying snail diversity in Southeast Asia recently discovered, a new species of tiny snail with a shell reminiscent of a Cubist painting.
The snail in question was found in Khao Sam Roi Yot National Park in Thailand and, as of yet, is known only from this location. What made it stand out from others within its genus was the structures within the opening of its shell, as well as the ridge on its very last whorl.
It’s these distinctive whorls that also lent the new species its name – Anauchen picasso. With a rounded, rectangular shape, the whorls reminded the researchers of Cubism, a style of art created and popularized by artists like Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque back in the early 20th century.
Still, it wouldn’t necessarily be easy to spot this little work of art. In both height and width, A. picasso’s shell measures at just under 3 millimeters, meaning you could place six of its shells across a US penny and still have a bit of room left over.
A closer look at the “Picasso” snail.
It’s size classes A. picasso as a “microsnail”, and only one of 46 new species of such snails to have been described by the team in a whopping 300-page article (the irony of tiny snails, big article is not lost on us). The new cohort of microsnails originates from a range of countries across Southeast Asia, including Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam.
However, they weren’t all discovered in these locations by recent fieldwork. Some were instead uncovered from long-held museum collections, something that turns out to be surprisingly common when it comes to discovering new species.
A. Picasso isn’t the only of the new microsnails with a name inspired by the arts either; a species discovered from Myanmar was dubbed Bensonella dracula, because, as the authors write, the “two strong palatal tubercles of this species resemble teeth of a vampire.”
That might not sound very pretty, but the researchers told Pensoft in a blog post that all of the snails “are real beauties”.
“Their shells exhibit extraordinarily complexity. For example, the aperture (the ‘opening’ of the shell) is armed with numerous tooth-like barriers, which are most probably useful against predators. Furthermore, several of the new species have an aperture that turns upwards or downwards, which means that some species carry their shells upside-down.”
Tiny, teethy snails with upside-down shells? That sounds pretty cool to us.
The study is published in ZooKeys.
Source Link: Teeny Tiny New Snail Species Named After Picasso, Because Mollusks Are Artists Too
