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A snail with a Picasso-like shell is among 46 dazzling new species recently identified in Southeast Asia. Their discovery highlights both nature’s hidden artistry and the urgent threat of habitat destruction. Credit: Artistic enhancement of photos by Gojšina et al. A tiny snail with a cubist-style shell, named after Picasso, sheds light on undiscovered biodiversity and growing habitat loss in Southeast Asia. They say beauty is everywhere, if we have eyes to see. For one team of scientists, it revealed itself in a tiny, 3-millimeter snail. While surveying snail biodiversity in Southeast Asia, an international team of malacologists, scientists who...

C. cooki, measuring about 10 millimeters (0.4 inches) long. (Jeff Goddard) **************************************************************** A species of clam known only by the 28,000-year-old fossils it left behind has turned up alive and well on an American shoreline. The small, translucent bivalve, known as Cymatioa cooki, was recently discovered hiding in the rocky intertidal zone of southern California – a place carefully combed over by scientists for many, many years. "It's not all that common to find alive a species first known from the fossil record, especially in a region as well-studied as Southern California," says marine ecologist Jeff Goddard from the...

On a rainy afternoon in April, Union Square Park was, as is often the case, home to a band of protesters. This time, the cause was not inequality or political oppression, it was a mollusk — an octopus to be precise. Protesters held signs reading “let’s stop this cruelty” and “#stopoctopusfarm” beneath images of the leggy creature. Amidst rising demand for the tentacled delight, Spanish company Nueva Pescanova has announced that it will open the world’s first octopus farm in 2023. But the plan is mired in controversy with environmentalists, zoologists and animal lovers decrying that it would be a...

Octopuses, crabs, and lobsters will be recognized as sentient beings under UK animal welfare laws after a review concluded there is strong evidence they are capable of feelings. The UK government announced Friday that decapods, an order of crustaceans, and cephalopods, a class of mollusks, will now fall under the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill. Decapods include animals like crabs, lobsters, shrimp, prawns, and crayfish, and cephalopods include octopuses, squids, and cuttlefish. The announcement said the bill "already recognizes all animals with a backbone (vertebrates) as sentient beings. However...decapod crustaceans and cephalopods have complex central nervous systems, one of the key...

Researchers have discovered a new, giant species species of shipworm that measures up to five feet long. The giant, slimy animal was discovered after it was tapped out of a tusk-like shell. The giant shipworm lives in shallow mud bays in the Philippines and relies on bacteria in its gills to make its food.

New Jersey faces a potential shutdown of its $790 million oyster, clam and mussel harvest if federally-mandated health inspections and coastal patrols are not improved this summer, according to state and federal authorities. How the state responds over the next few months to federal requirements geared toward preventing outbreaks of illness from contaminated shellfish is crucial to the mollusk industry, said officials from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The FDA contends the state Department of Health and Senior Services failed to conduct adequate inspections in 2008 and 2009 at plants that process the mollusks hauled in by small, commercial...

The rise of mollusks across the globe was a harbinger of doom roughly 250 million years ago, ushering in the most devastating mass extinction in Earth's history, research now reveals.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 5:50 a.m. ET DARTMOUTH, Mass. (AP) -- The war on terror could have an unlikely ally in a modest mollusk known as the quahog. Researchers who injected the clams with enough botulism toxin to kill 1,000 people found the shellfish somehow neutralized the enzyme, which is considered a potential bioterror agent. ``Botulism activity was cut in half by the blood of the quahog,'' Dr. Bal Ram Singh told The Standard Times of New Bedford in Wednesday's editions. ``So we think there is some sort of antidote in this blood. If we are able to...