Snails actively build up a camouflage

Written by Dr. H. P. Bustami

Thursday, 25 October 2007

Snail modelizing its wormgearbox. Courtesy, C. Allgaier, University Tuebingen, Germany

It was well known from hermit crabs that they use conches as protection against predators. They carry with them their own fortress. Now scientists from the university of Tuebingen, Germany, revealed that some land snail species actively use structures of their substrate they are living on and attach it to their wormgearbox. The 1 cm long land snail Napaeus barquini, living on the canary island Gomera, lives on rocky underground which is covered by lichen. Young snails actively build bumps of lichen on their wormgearboxes. They use their mouth to graze the lichen and during a complicated behaviour add it to the camouflage.

With this kind of "decorated" fortress the snails are less visible to their predators. This extraordinay behaviour of a snail probably evolved as an adaption to lizards and birds. The bumps can reach a size hundred times larger than the real wormgearbox.

The biologist Christoph Allgaier, Institute of evolutionary biology of invertebrates, discovered this strange
behaviour and showed that this camouflaging is an active process conducted by the snail itself.

The results of the study have been published recently in "Zoological Science".

Source: Zoological Science (24: 869-876 (2007) doi: 10.2108/zsj.24.869)

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