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Home / News / Tags / snail
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Snails make a group comprising over 75,000 species. Most snails are marine, but they also inhabit freshwater and terrestrial habitats, even dry ones. One group of sea snails are called Opistobranchia (the translation of the scientific name means "fore gills", as these organs, when existent, are located behind the vis... |
18 February 2008
10:39 GMT |
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1. There are 80,000 species of living mollusks, classified in Gastropoda (snails and slugs), Bivalvia (clams, oysters and scallops), Cepahlopoda (squids, cuttlefish and octopuses), Scaphopoda, Polyplacophora (chitons), Aplacophora, Monoplacophora, Caudofoveata. Because most mollusks have hard shells, many were fossil... |
25 January 2008
17:31 GMT |
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1.World's largest snail is the Australian trumpet (Syrinx aruanus), a sea species from the shores of northern and western Australia which can grow up to 77.2 cm (30 inches) in shell length, while the flesh weighs up to 18 kg (40lbs). The longest snail is Parenteroxenos doglieli, a parasite in the body cavity of ... |
5 January 2008
06:23 GMT |
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Some animals mimic their environment, turning elusive for both their prey and predators, like in the case of cuttlefish and octopuses (but not of the chameleons, which also change colors). Others have to create their own camouflages. Some crabs have spikes on their back on which they thrust algae and sponges so that ... |
7 November 2007
05:35 GMT |
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In some countries, people drool when thinking about snails, while in other people`s case the only reaction is…yuck! And what was meant to be a big business has actually become a major nuisance for Brazil: the giant African snail (Achatina achatina). The invader measures up to 8 inches (about 20 centimeters, 5 times m... |
22 October 2007
04:23 GMT |
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A dead zebra in the African savanna means a fiesta for the vultures around. But if we're talking about dead whales, this fiesta can last for decades. And there are specialized marine communities which are adapted for this purpose. This is called whale fall and the first recognized one was in 1989 in southern Ca... |
21 September 2007
05:03 GMT |
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Snails don't fly, nor can they swim in the sea (at least those connected to tree life), so that researchers were puzzled for over a century about how Tahitian tree snails (Partula hyalina) "jumped" from Tahiti to two relatively distant Polynesian islands, Austral and Southern Cook Islands. More puzzling was the ... |
20 September 2007
04:11 GMT |
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The most famous mass extinction is perhaps that of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago. The current man made extinction could be even worse. And several mass extinctions occurred along the geological eras. But the dinosaur extinction could be a minor event compared to what the clumsy snails and clams did 250 million ... |
31 July 2007
03:43 GMT |
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If we take into account the snails that come out after the rain, you would say about them only that they are cute, little vegetarians. The Italians, French and Spanish would say that they're delicious, too. But do not be fooled by the pacific life of the terrestrial snails. The marine ones can be in fact amongst... |
2 July 2007
09:43 GMT |
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Some lizards and insects lost sex (they reproduce by cloning). Other lizards have given rise to legless snakes and lizards. Cave fishes and amphibians lost their eyes. Apes lost their tails and humans fur. Ostriches and kiwi do not have functional wings; fleas lost their wings at all. Evolution often eliminates compl... |
25 April 2007
04:48 GMT |
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As if pollution, global warming and overharvesting were not been enough, a new menace comes to complete the coral bleaching.A bloom of predator poisonous and spiny starfish, named crown-of-thorns is destroying large areas of coral reef throughout the Philippines. These voracious predators can wipe out large areas of ... |
16 April 2007
04:09 GMT |
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