Tiny new species of snail with stunning shell named after Picasso

By Stephen Beech

A tiny new species of snail with an unusual shell has been named after the painter Pablo Picasso.

Researchers who discovered the three-millimetre creature say they came up with the name because when they first spotted it, they "saw art."

An international team, led by Serbian PhD student Vukašin Gojšina and his Hungarian supervisor, Dr. Barna Páll-Gergely, was exploring snail diversity in South East Asia when the species, previously unknown to science, grabbed their attention.

They explained that, unlike most other snails, Anauchen picasso has rectangularly angled whorls that, according to the scientists, make it look “like a cubist interpretation of other snails with ‘normal’ shell shapes.”

Dr. Páll-Gergely said: “Although the shell sizes of these snails are less than 5mm, they are real beauties!

"Their shells exhibit extraordinary 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.”

The apertural barriers and the orientation of the last whorl on the shell were among the primary characters that helped the researchers tell different snails apart.

The research team, whose findings were published in the journal ZooKeys, has produced a 300-page article including the descriptions of 46 new species of microsnails from Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam.

While many of the new species were collected recently, several, unknown to science until now, were found in the collection of the Florida Museum of Natural History, collected in the 1980s.

Dr. Páll-Gergely added: "It is likely - and in some cases, certain - that the locations where these snails were found have already been destroyed by deforestation and limestone quarrying, which are the major threats to locally endemic land snails in South East Asia."