Meet the rough periwinkle, a unique snail that defies the norm by giving live birth instead of laying eggs. Unlike its egg-laying relatives, the rough periwinkle has evolved a brood pouch from its jelly gland, where the eggs develop inside the mother’s body. This means that the mother snail can carry up to a few hundred embryos at different stages of development. When it’s time for the babies to be born, they may crawl out of the mother’s body on their own, a fascinating sight to witness. The newborn snails then scrape a hole in their eggshell-like covering and find their way out of the mother’s body, although the exact method of how they do this remains a mystery. This incredible phenomenon has been observed by evolutionary ecologist Kerstin Johannesson of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.
2024-01-22 07:00:00
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