Snails have a thing for sexy stems

In the marshlands of the southeast United States, the periwinkle snail is among the most abundant grazing species. "You can look out at high tide and see them everywhere, climbing up on the grasses," said Randall Hughes, ...

Snail shell coiling programmed by protein patterning

Snail shells coil in response to an lopsided protein gradient across their shell mantles, finds research in BioMed Central's open access journal EvoDevo. In contrast the shell mantle of limpets, whose shells do not coil, ...

1,500-year-old landfill discovered in USVI

(AP)—Crews renovating a public square in the U.S. Virgin Islands have discovered a 1,500-year-old landfill stuffed with shells, bones and pottery fragments.

What's eating the sea butterfly? CO2, study says

Rising acidity is eating away the shells of tiny snails, known as "sea butterflies", that live in the seas around Antarctica, leaving them vulnerable to predators and disease, scientists said Sunday.

Hitchhiking snails fly from ocean to ocean

Smithsonian scientists and colleagues report that snails successfully crossed Central America, long considered an impenetrable barrier to marine organisms, twice in the past million years -- both times probably by flying ...

Marine snails get a metabolism boost

Most of us wouldn't consider slow-moving snails to be high-metabolism creatures. But at one point in the distant past, snail metabolism sped up, says a new study of marine snails in the journal Paleobiology.

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