According to the British website of " Guardian ", their shells are only 0.86 mm high. Researchers believe they are the smallest terrestrial snails found to date.
reported that these snails are visible to the naked eye, but they are difficult to recognize. The research was published in the journal Biokey.
Barna Pal-Gergley, a scientist at Shinshu University in Japan and one of the authors of the study, said he was excited to find these "really small" snails.
researchers found these smallest "microsnails" ever when collecting soil samples at the bottom of limestone in Guangxi Province. They said the snails may be native to the local area, and the closest they are living in Thailand, about 621 miles away.
Pal Gergley said that the extremely small bodies of these snails are difficult to explain by evolution.
Parr-Gergley also said: "We cannot explain their size by adapting to the environment. For very small insects, we can guess why they evolved into this way, but for snails, it is difficult to guess. All snails in this family are small, and they may have lived in common ancestors of 60 million years ago, and they are also very small. Since then, this very small species has survived under different geographical locations and different climatic conditions."
reported that he also said that it is impossible to find smaller snails because the organs and cells of snails cannot be smaller, and the survival of snails requires the minimum number of cells.
