It usually takes two to four weeks for the eggs to hatch and for the baby snails to emerge, shells and all. The shell of a baby snail, often referred to as a protoconch or “earliest shell,” is ...

In experiments designed to simulate the evolutionary transition that produced slugs, researchers exposed baby snails to the metal platinum, causing the animals to develop without external shells.

Though pond snail shells usually curl clockwise ... The scientists then tried to change the ways baby snails develop by treating the snail embryos with an anti-formin drug. As expected, the ...

Most snails are righties. Now scientists have found genes that make some of them born with shells coiling the other way. By JoAnna Klein The overwhelming majority of snails live in shells that ...

The live birth of these snails fascinates Johannesson and others because the species probably developed the ability in the last 100,000 years or so. That’s just an evolutionary eyeblink, really.