Imma Perfetto
Cosmos science journalist
The famous cubist artist Pablo Picasso never painted snails, but if he had, they might have looked something like a newly discovered species from Thailand.
The 3mm microsnail has rectangularly angled whorls which, according to the scientists who found it, look “like a cubist interpretation” of regular snails’ rounded whorls.
Not surprisingly they named the species Anauchen picasso.
The group of malacologists (researchers studying molluscs) discovered the unknown species in Thailand’s Khao Sam Roi Yot National Park while exploring snail diversity in Southeast Asia.
A. picasso is just one of 46 new microsnails described in an article published in the peer-reviewed journal ZooKeys.
These new species have been found in Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam, or were rediscovered in the Florida Museum of Natural History after being collected in the 1980s.
“Although the shell sizes of these snails are less than 5mm, they are real beauties!” the researchers say.
“Their shells exhibit extraordinarily complexity. For example, the aperture (the opening of the shell) is armed with numerous tooth-like barriers, which are most probably useful against predators.
“Furthermore, several of the new species have an aperture that turns upwards or downwards, which means that some species carry their shells upside-down.”
These characteristics were among the features used by the researchers to tell the different snails apart.
