I love to see ambition in a snail! Let's face it, when you spend AGES slowly sliming your way around on a giant, sticky foot, you've got room for new ideas.
We've already seen that some slugs and snails have taken to the pelagic life, swimming through the ocean far above the sea floor where their kith and kin ooze at a pace scarcely faster than an upturned bucket of their own mucus.
Others are still on the foothills of such adventurous feats. After all, you need to walk before you can run! Or not-quite-swim before you can swim.
Video: liquidguru
It's a snail! With a gigantic, flattened foot that allows her to sort of... jump. It looks like a young bird learning to fly; awkward, silly and heart-warming.
It's a start. It even looks like her shell has become a little thinner and lighter so it doesn't weigh her down so much. Hopefully her descendants will take up the baton. If they can find a way to catch food in the open ocean, we may one day welcome a new member to the pelagic gastropod community.
10 comments:
That has to be the most adorable snail I have ever seen...and thanks to your website, I've seen quite a few!
It's a beauty! And I've been really astounded by the tremendous variety of snails there are out there!
ITS A RAINBOW FLIER!!!!
wave it in the air like you just don't care! okay, water...
I want some!
And I want to keep them and dress them up in bling and show off my snailfish to my friends!
(it has to be snail+fish = snailfish, because fish+snail = fail)
@Ethan Kranz: I always thought rainbows needed a leg-up in the world!
@TexWisGirl: If you got it, wave it! wherever you happen to be.
@Lear's Fool: Snailfish is already taken! It's amazingly difficult to come up with something new by adding fish at the end!
Wow, you're right, fish are absurdly represented in common suffixes of non-fish species. There's even a treefish!
I'm just going to name mine Wilbur.
Treefish? Haha! That doesn't make any sense at all!
The other one is putting "sea" in front. I tried to make up one that couldn't possibly exist, but it turns out a Sea Potato is small, brown Sea Urchin.
Wilbur... you can probably get away with that one!
That's what happened to me with Treefish!
See, we'd all be in horrible shape without the internet.
Me: Snailfish!
You: Taken!
Me: Well, at least it's not really crazy, like *snort* Treefish!
You: That's almost as absurd as Sea Potato!
Me: Sea Pansy!Silverfish!
You: Peacock Mantis Shrimp!
Me: We make up excellent fake things.
Hahah! Yeah! We'd never realise how crazy our ancestors were!
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