Centipedes do not have a hundred legs, millipedes do not have a thousand legs, how many hands does the rose thousand-handed snail have? It doesn't even have a hand!
According to the data, the distribution of chicoreus palmarosae is extremely extensive, from Madagascar, Maldives Islands, Mozambique and Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean in the west to Australia, Indonesia, India, Thailand, the Philippines, Japan and China's Taiwan and the South China Sea (Paracel) in the western Pacific Ocean. But when I opened the thick "China Marine Life List", I couldn't find the name rose thousand hand snail, why is this?
Distribution range of rose mille-handed snails. Image: Aquamaps
In fact, the name of the rose thousand hand snail is the name of Taiwan in China, and the Chinese name of the genus Chicoreus in the List of Marine Organisms of China is the genus spinosa, that is, the rose snail.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > protection from a thousand hands</h1>
The light tan shell of the rose thousand hand snail is spindle-shaped and very hard, with a deep suture line on the surface of the shell and a high spiral tower. There are black brown thin spiral ribs and three longitudinal swelling ribs, the longitudinal ribs are covered with short pink spines, and the end of the spines is forked like a deer antler like a pair of small hands, hence the name Thousand Hands Snail, although it is easy to associate with "Thousand Hands Kannon", but in fact, the two are not related.
Small hands that look "soft and sticky". Image: Bricktop/Wikipedia
The appearance of rose mille-handed snails from different regions varies significantly. For example, the spines on the shell of the Rose Thousand Hands snail produced in the Philippines are short, the degree of fork is low, the shell surface has obvious dark brown stripes, and the shell near the top of the shell is light red.
The Philippines with deep spines produces rose mille-handed snails. Image: dpom/iNaturalist
The color of Sri Lanka is generally lighter than that of the Philippines, and the color of the spines is also significantly different, and the spines are long and forked relative to the proportion of the shell. Rose millipelanchs, which are produced in parts of South Africa, have longer spines and a very pale shell, usually pale pink, with thin and shallow stripes.
Light pink South African rose mille-handed snail. Image: Seastung/iNaturalist
The gorgeous thorns on the rose thousand hand snail are not simply shown, after all, it does not rely on appearance to eat. The rose thousand-handed snail's "thousand-handed" spines are only for the sake of the predator: no one wants to swallow this hard shell full of thorns in one bite, and it looks like it tastes bad.
This is also a common self-defense trick for many members of the osteospiaceae family where the rose thousand hand snail is located. Representatives of the family Osteospiridae are the witch bone snail (Murex troscheli) and the Venus bone snail (Murex pecten), which are well known to shellfish collectors, and the snail has slender protrusions like fish bones, which is why they are called bone snails.
Witch Bone Snail (left) and Venus Bone Snail (right). Image: Left: MerlinCharon / Wikipedia; Right: Didier Descouens / Wikipedia
Of course, not all members of the osteospiridae are so easy to identify, the main feature is the shell is irregular, angular and with a variety of bumps, one of the popular large conchs (Rapana venosa) is a member of the bone snail family.
It is said to be comparable to the vein red snail of abalone. Image: George Chernilevsky /Wikipedia
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > shells that we grab </h1>
As one of the representatives of carnivorous gastropods, except for a small number of species that eat carrion, most members of the orthopedic family are out-and-out shell killers, feeding on other shells. Oysters, mussels and other bivalves that like to attach to the rock reef are the delicacies that bone snails come to hand. They hold their mouths tightly against the shellfish shell and then rely on the acid they secrete to corrode the hard shell.
That alone is not enough. "Good appetite for teeth, eat ma ma fragrant body double stick!" The toothed tongue sac of the rose thousand hand snail, which looks like only a soft mass, is covered with the tooth tongue, which is a very important feeding structure of mollusks. Many carnivorous shellfish, including rose milleyear, have a standard sharp tongue, consisting mainly of intermediate and lateral teeth, and lack marginal teeth, after all, they no longer need to rely on scraping algae for survival.
Schematic diagram of the process of feeding using the tooth tongue. Image: Debivort /Wikipedia
In general, bivalve shellfish living in sediment are more susceptible to attack by snails that also prefer to live in sediment. Most members of the osteospiaceae prefer to live in a rocky environment, so those bivalve shellfish that live in a fixed life are the main food source for the members of the osteospiridae.
Shellfish that live in the camp are the main food source for bone snails. Image: Mark A. Wilson / Wikipedia
These seemingly slow-moving, harmless outbreaks of predatory snails can also have an impact on the ecological environment or economic production. According to literature, in July 1956, in July 1956, in The oyster enemy Indothais gradata, which mainly hunted oysters along the coast of Guangdong, caused the loss of all the oyster seedlings cast that year. The rose millipelanch, which is mainly distributed in the South China Sea and the southern part of the East China Sea, can also prey on large bivalves such as the cormorant that lives on coral reefs.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > small shells also have great wisdom </h1>
Although there is currently no study on the predation behavior of rose thousand-handed snails, we can still imagine how these fleshless undersea killers are waiting for those double-hulled creatures that have no power to fight back.
We know that the same shell is thin and thick, and bone snails tend to punch or sand in the most vulnerable places of the shell in order to save time.
Purple mussels that have been polished to the edges by a ringed bone snail. Image: Brian Morton, et al. / Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom(2007)
A study of The Hexaplex trunculus's predation of purple mussels (Mytilus galloprovincialis) showed that the ring-banded snails (shell height 40 mm) of small individuals tended to punch holes at the shell edge of the purple mussels, and the punching and grinding behavior of individual ring-banded bone snails (shell height 55 mm) was about half of the time, but both at the edge of the shell. Only large individual rings with bone snails (shell height 70 mm) will be directly punched in the sides of the shell of the purple mussel shell with a shell length of 35 mm and the largest 65 mm.
Different shell height ring bone snails have different feeding methods for different sizes of purple mussels. Illustration: C: Sanding; D Drilling. Image: Brian Morton, et al. / Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom(2007)
I don't know if you have imagined the picture of the rose thousand hand snail preying, but we at least don't have to worry about the rose thousand hand snail will grab the mussels with us to eat, after all, their population density is far from endangering shellfish farming.
Although the Rose Thousand Hands Snail does not have a thousand hands, it has nothing to do with the "Thousand Hands Kannon". But 2020 is an extraordinary year for everyone in the world, if the thousand hand snail can really transform into the real body of the "thousand hand Guanyin", in the last day of the upcoming farewell to 2020, pray that the rose thousand hand snail can bless everyone with good health, happiness and peace in 2021!
I hope you all have good health, happiness and peace in 2021! Image: Species calendar
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