The scaly-foot snail, also known as the Chrysomallon squamiferum, is one tough cookie, folks! This snail hangs out at hydrothermal vents on the seafloor of the Indian Ocean. And get this, as an adult, it doesn’t even need to eat! Nope, all of the snail’s nutrition is whipped up internally by endosymbiotic bacteria—a fancy term for microbes that chill in the snail’s gut. Talk about self-sufficient, am I right?
Now, let’s talk about the snail’s killer feature—the iron-infused scales covering its foot. Yep, you heard me right, iron scales! These bad boys get their strength from minerals sucked up from the scorching hot liquid that shoots out of hydrothermal vents and black smoker chimneys on the ocean floor. We’re talking temperatures up to a blistering 752 degrees Fahrenheit (400 degrees Celsius), people! The snail’s scales beef up with sulfur and iron ions to form iron sulfide nanoparticles. And as if that wasn’t enough, the snail also sports an outer layer of iron sulfide in its shell, making it the only multicellular animal known to beef up its skeleton with iron. Don’t go dunking these snails in water, though, or they’ll start to rust. Yep, you heard it here first, folks!
But wait, there’s more! Beneath all that iron armor, the scaly-foot snail actually has a ginormous heart—the biggest in the Animal Kingdom compared to its size, making up a hefty 4% of its entire body volume. In low-oxygen waters, this mammoth heart also pumps oxygen to the bacteria hanging out in the snail’s esophageal gland, acting as an in-built food factory. These snails, nicknamed “sea pangolins” for their resemblance to the armored land mammal, measure about 2 inches (5 centimeters) in shell length on average. Plus, they’re rocking both male and female sex organs. Living it up at depths of about 1.7 miles (2,780 meters), these snails are only found at three hydrothermal vent fields east of Mauritius, an island off Africa’s southeast coast.
Not to rain on the snail parade, but their habitat is shrinking faster than a sweater in the dryer, folks. These tough snails are in danger thanks to human activity, with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) slapping them on the Red List of endangered species in 2019. In fact, these snails are the first critters to hit “endangered” status due to threats from deep-sea mining. The snails are hanging on by a thread in an area of just 0.008 square miles (0.02 sq km), even though they could potentially live in about 0.1 square miles (0.3 square kilometers). It’s a tough world out there, even for the strongest snails on the block, folks.
So, next time you’re feeling a little weak, just remember the scaly-foot snail and its iron scales of glory. Who knew a tiny snail in the deep sea could teach us so much about strength and resilience?
