Tiny species of snail could be world’s smallest

An worldwide team of researchers were examining soil samples at the base of limestone rocks in Guangxi Province, Southern China, when they stumbled upon the world’s smallest species of land snails.

The species, called angustopila dominikae, is so small that 10 of the snails can fit into the eye of a needle, according to The Guardian.

Angustopila dominikae, whose shell measures just 0.86 millimetres, is possibly the world’s smallest land snail.

There are a number of species, known as Achatina fulica, the giant Ghana tiger snail (Achatina achatina), and margies (Archachatina marginata). From left to right is A. fabella, A. szekeresi, A. elevata, A. subelevata and the A. dominikae. This is a large group, according to Barna Páll-Gergely of Shinshu University in Japan and colleagues, who wrote in 2014 in the journal ZooKeys that snails this small account for most of the diversity in tropical land snails.

These tiny snails not only look attractive, but also gains a lot of interest from scientists to know more about their adaptation to the environment, said Páll-Gergely.

They hope that this will be another step forward in studying the “evolution of dwarfism in invertebrates”. The team of researchers studied what they could of the small creature, with only its miniscule shell to examine.

This “microsnail” is the world’s smallest snail found in China.

‘Investigating tiny-shelled land snails is important for assessing biodiversity and natural history as well as for establishing the foundation for studying the evolution of dwarfism in invertebrate animals.

Researchers describe the shell as being minute, light grey with 4.75 whorls.

Another new species, Angustopila subelevata, measures only about 0.036 inches (0.91 mm) in height.

The seven new species belong to three genera Angustopila, Hypselostoma and Krobylos within the family Hypselostomatidae.

Since this discovery is absolutely new, details like how these snails live, thrive or survive are still yet to be researched. That honor goes only to ammonicera minortalis that ranges just from 0.32 mm to 0.46 mm in length.