homehome Home chatchat Notifications


The Cubist of the Undergrowth: Scientists Discover Snail with Picasso-Like Shell

A tiny new snail species echoes the angular spirit of modern art.

Tudor Tarita
May 11, 2025 @ 5:59 pm

share Share

At just three millimeters long, the newest addition to science’s catalog of life is easy to miss. But when a team of malacologists stumbled upon the minute snail in a Thai national park, they noticed something remarkable—a twist of geometry that seemed to echo the bold distortions of Picasso himself.

They named it Anauchen picasso.

The snail’s shell defies the smooth spirals we associate with its kind. Instead, it folds into boxy, angular whorls, a shape one researcher described as “like a cubist interpretation of other snails with ‘normal’ shell shapes.” It’s a natural form so distinct, so artful, that it seemed to demand a name that commands respect.

Anauchen picasso shell
Anauchen picasso shell. Credit: Gojšina

The discovery came amid a sweeping effort to catalog the often overlooked: microsnails, land mollusks smaller than a grain of rice. Led by Serbian Ph.D. student Vukašin Gojšina and his Hungarian mentor Barna Páll-Gergely, the international team has just published a 300-page monograph in the journal ZooKeys detailing 46 new species from across Southeast Asia—Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. These include 17 new species of Anauchen.

Most are no larger than five millimeters. But their shells, the researchers write, are “real beauties.”

Intricately coiled, their apertures—the openings where the snail emerges—are often armed with jagged, tooth-like barriers. These features likely act as armor against predators. In some species, the final curl of the shell twists upward or downward, flipping the whole structure into what looks like an upside-down spiral. Such traits helped scientists tease apart species that, to the untrained eye, look nearly identical.

“Although the shell sizes of these snails are less than 5 mm, they are real beauties!” the researchers emphasized. “Their shells exhibit extraordinary complexity.”

Why Microsnails Matter

To outsiders, these minuscule molluscs might seem trivial. But they tell a much larger story—about evolution, geography, and extinction.

The limestone landscapes of Southeast Asia are biodiversity hotspots, and snails are their quiet sentinels. Because they don’t migrate far and are adapted to very specific niches, their shells serve as a record of evolutionary change and environmental isolation.

Yet they are also at risk. Many species described in the new study are known from only a single cave or cliff face. That makes them exceptionally vulnerable to habitat destruction, particularly quarrying for cement, which is widespread in the region.

“The Latin word evanidus means vanishing, which refers to the quarrying of the type locality of this species,” the authors explain of Anauchen evanidus, one of the new species whose only known habitat may already be gone.

In that sense, each new species is both a scientific discovery and a conservation emergency.

Shells of species belonging to the genus Anauchen, including A. picasso (N)
Shells of species belonging to the genus Anauchen. Credit: Gojšina

Not all of the species were recently collected. Some had been hiding in plain sight for decades—in drawers at the Florida Museum of Natural History, where specimens gathered during the 1980s had sat unrecognized. Now, with fresh eyes and sharper tools, they’ve been named and described.

But many of the places these snails once lived may no longer exist.

Deforestation and limestone quarrying are rampant across Southeast Asia. These are not just general threats to biodiversity—they are lethal to land snails, which often evolve in small, hyper-local pockets of habitat and can vanish when even a single hill is destroyed. Some of the species in this new catalog might already be extinct.

Yet even in extinction, they tell a story.

“These snails,” the authors wrote, “are pieces of art hidden in the leaf litter.” Their forms are sculpted over millennia by evolution and geology, shaped as much by isolation as by adaptation. The toothy apertures, the upside-down shells, the cubist spirals—these are records of survival, etched in calcium carbonate.

share Share

Spanish Galleon Sank With $17-Billion Worth of Treasure In Today's Money. Now Confirmed As the World’s Richest Shipwreck

Researchers link underwater treasure to the legendary Spanish galleon sunk in 1708

The oceans are so acidic they're dissolving the shells of marine creatures

We've ignored ocean acidification for far too long.

Scientists Made a Battery Powered by Probiotics That's Completely Biodegradable

Scientists have built a battery powered by yogurt microbes that dissolves after use.

Scientists stunned to observe that humpback whales might be trying to talk to us

These whales used bubble rings to seemingly send messages to humans.

Physicists Say Light Can Be Made From Nothing and Now They Have the Simulation to Prove It

An Oxford-led team simulation just brought one of physics' weirdest predictions to life.

Lawyers are already citing fake, AI-generated cases and it's becoming a problem

Just in case you're wondering how society is dealing with AI.

Identical Dinosaur Prints Found on Opposite Sides of the Atlantic Ocean 3,700 Miles Apart

Millions of years ago, the Atlantic Ocean split these continents but not before dinosaurs walked across them.

This Wildcat Helped Create the House Cat and Is Now at Risk Because of It

The house cat's ancestor is in trouble.

Saurpod Dinosaur’s Last Meal Perfectly Preserved for 95 Million Years Shows What They Really Ate

Sauropods were the largest land-living animals of all time. Finding the traces of a sauropod’s last meal is nothing short of extraordinary.

Muscle bros love their cold plunges. Science says they don't really work (for gains)

The cold plunge may not be helping those gains you work so hard for.