Snail shells are often colorful and strikingly patterned. This is due to pigments that are produced in special cells of the snail and stored in the shell in varying concentrations. Fossil shells, on ...

The great pond snail is helping scientists make great leaps in their understanding of asymmetries in the animal kingdom. Paul Starosta/Corbis Whether it flies, walks or swims, nearly any given animal ...

Symmetry is a feature of many plants, animals and even some molecules -- like water. But that's not the case with snails and their coiled shells. They are chiral -- asymmetrical in such a way that ...

The gastropod shell is an animal shell which is part of the body of a gastropod or snail. It is an external skeleton or exoskeleton, which serves not only for muscle attachment, but also for ...

Bryan Nelson is a science writer and award-winning documentary filmmaker with over a decade of experience covering technology, astronomy, medicine, animals, and more. The candy cane snail (Liguus ...

A mollusk discovered just a decade ago called the scaly-foot gastropod doesn’t sound like the toughest of creatures. But researchers have found that its armor could help engineers improve load-bearing ...

Deep beneath the ocean’s surface lie the “black smokers“, undersea chimneys channelling superheated water from below the Earth’s crust. Completely devoid of sunlight, they are some of the most extreme ...