The Volcano Snail, The Only Thing Harder To Crush Than Elon Musk's Ego

Blake Seidel • Managing Editor & Brand Manager

Feb 3, 2023 3:00 PM EST

Okay, okay, all jokes about dear Elon aside, this snail is an absolute beast. Snails don't get a lot of time in the spotlight, so we wanted to highlight this special mollusk and all its glory, with our own little "Animal Comedy" twist. Did you know that snails have over 20,000 teeth? It's crazy, the pictures are terrifying, yet incredibly satisfying to look at.

Researchers in Hong Kong are trying to decode this snail's genome to use the information to build more durable battle armor (sounds super cool, right?). These deep-sea snails are escar-going to be the next big thing in military fashion, and we think that's pretty darn amazing. Check out some cool facts about this marvelous mollusk underneath the pictures below. We'll see you next slime!

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via all_thats_interesting

These snails are absolute crushing it (quite the opposite actually)! They take iron sulfides from the ocean floor and incorporate it into their exoskeleton, making their shell made of literal iron. Plus, they live on the ocean floor with incredibly high water pressure, the level that would normally crush humans in a second!
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via Kentaro Nakamura, et al./Wikimedia commons

It's not named the "Volcano snail for nothing" The volcanic vents that they live in get up to 750 degrees Fahrenheit!!!! Take a second to appreciate how hot that is. It's 3x hotter than the temperature of boiling water.
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via NTB Staff
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via Rachel Caauwe/Wikimedia Commons
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via David Shale
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via Pen News / HKUST
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via Pen News / HKUST
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via @NightExcision
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This is an example of a volcanic vent on the ocean floor, where they live

via NOAA Ocean Exploration
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via IWSMT