By Jonathan Webb
Science reporter, BBC
News
A tiny species of sea snail
"flies" underwater using movements just like winged insects,
according to a study.
The 3mm critter flaps its wing
structures, which grow where a snail's foot would normally be, in a
characteristic figure-of-eight pattern.
It also uses some of the vortex-making
tricks that keep insects in the air.
"It looks like it's flying, like a
very small insect," said Dr David Murphy, a mechanical engineer at Johns Hopkins
University
The study, published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, was part of his
PhD research while studying at Georgia Tech.
Honorary insect
Limacina helicina is a
bizarre-looking predatory mollusc which, when not displaying its swimming
prowess, makes large webs of mucus to filter-feed on smaller plankton.
Its insect-like acrobatics are "a
remarkable example of convergent evolution", the researchers write. In
other words, the same trait has evolved more than once in completely
independent lineages.
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