At the bottom of the ocean, scientists discovered a unique snail-predator

Oceanographers accidentally found an unusual snail-“spider-man”.

Oceanographers found off the coast of Florida is extremely bizarre snail, which leads a sedentary lifestyle and preys on the germs by shooting special hunting networks, like spider-man from the comics.

This is stated in an article published in the journal PeerJ.

“These snails, and worms are especially strange living creatures. They have an additional pair of tentacles at the base of their body, which is like a kind hands. They use these tentacles to shoot his goo. When released into water, this mucus turns into webs, just like spider-man. When it gets plankton and microbes, the snail draws in this web by eating the prey, ” said rüdiger Bieler (Ruediger Bieler) from the Field Museum of Chicago (USA).

Oceanographers have discovered the existence of this snail by accident – when he studied the flora and fauna of the flooded vehicle tracking off the coast of Florida. This ship, which participated in pictures of famous Russian film “Virus” in a role of vessel “Akademik wolves”, was deliberately sunk in 2008 for observation of how nature conquers shipwrecks and other human footprints on the bottom of the ocean.

That cochlea, which is attached to the skeleton of the sunken ship, received the name of Thylacodes vandyensis in honor of the ship. It uses its mucus to “spit” into the environment peculiar hunting networks with which it captures plankton and microbes.

This snail has penetrated into the Atlantic from the Indian ocean, where several species of snails, worms that look like her in appearance.

It is not clear whether these harm the snails to the local coral species and other living beings, or not, but scientists suggest that the discovery of the Motherland “snail-chelovekopotok” will help you understand what role in the life of the ecosystems they play, and whether to fight them to protect other animals from extinction. In particular, Beeler and his colleagues suspect that these snails can be carriers of parasites that destroy sea turtles in recent years.

paradox