Snails Fashion Their Own Camouflage

[coyote]

Snails Fashion Their Own Camouflage
"A land snail on the Canary Islands slurps up crusty lichens and applies them with its mouth to paint mounds of the mucky cover-up onto its shell. The result is a camouflaged snail that's not much of a looker.

Until now, it was a bit of a mystery how these snails got their cloaks of camouflage. Turns out, for Napaeus barquini, the camo is home-made. "

www.livescience.com/animals/071031-snail-camouflage.html

I couldn't get the video to appear; maybe it's been removed already.

[aerliss]

I don't know how to embed it here, but the link to the vid worked fine for me; www.livescience.com/common/media/video/player.php?videoRef=071030-SnailLichens

Clever little slimers.

[coyote]

The link works for me, but no video ever loads. It's just an empty grey rectangle on the page, with nothing there when I mouse over it.

[crossless]

Hmmh.. Do you have nother browser on you computer? is you flash player newest version? Some videos don't work on my computer with Google Chrome, but IE they work. And sometimes flash based video players works better on Chrome than IE.

[aerliss]

It's definitely a flash issue. Upgrade time?

It's a cute little time laps showing the snail plastering himself in... well, goo XD He extends himself right out so he can get his mouth to the very tip of his shell.

Things Mother Nature comes up with, eh?

[bluepegasus]

Wow, that's really interesting, and so is the video!

[coyote]

It wasn't working on Firefox. I tried the link on Safari, and it began to load, but then froze the browser and I had to force-quit.

Is the video in HD by any chance? My computer is a little old and can't handle HD.

[aerliss]

I don't think so. It doesn't look HD.

[coyote]

I'll send Mr Coyote the link and get him to play it for me on his brand-new laptop.