This is a diamond tipped indentors. They are used to inflict a ludicrous amount of pressure onto various kinds of objects to observe and measure the hardness of said object. Recently, one of these was used to measure the hardness of a certain animal’s shell, and, instead of crushing the ever-loving life out of it, it found serious resistance.
The aforementioned animal is a snail.
Let me spell this out. There is a snail that can resist the destruction and force of an industrial grade crusher equipped with a diamond – the hardest mineral in the world – applied with several metric tons. A snail that can resist a diamond indenter.
Imagine if you ever step on one of these snails, instead of crushing the little guy, the little guy crushes you.
Behold, The Scaly Foot Gastropod:
Look at this thing. It looks like it has armored plating on its side. That’s where it gets its name “scaly foot”. What we have here is the (quite lamely) named Scaly Foot Gastropod, also known by the considerably cooler and more awesome name, “Iron Snail”. This little guy that grows to about 5 cm in length, lives nearby the deep-sea thermal vents that shoot out water known as the black smokers.
That water, by the way, comes from under the mantle. Yeah, you heard that right. This water is borderline magma. Being near a black smoker means a couple things:
1: It’s completely dark. No light shines down in these outlawed aqua oceans.
2: The water down here is so poisonous that you might as well crush any other “superior” lifeform that tries to even dare live near this thing.
3: Heat up to 450 degrees celsius (1/13th the surface of the sun .
4: Pressure that could turn anything that lives outside the water into something that would probably star in “all tomorrows”.
If anything wants to even survive down here, they need to be hyper efficient war machines or practically impossible to kill.
It’s predators, such as the venomous killer cone snails with bionic harpoon guns that evolved from their own “teeth” (Yeah, I’m being so forreal), and the city-flattening crab full of carnage that pins down snails by their shell for days with jagged, ultra hard pincers specifically designed for hunting animals like this goes in the first category. Our Iron Snail goes in the second. Its sheer immortality to its dangers are completely voided because of how strong this thing is.
Its virtually-impossible-to-kill body is obtained by a chemosynthetic bacteria that sits around in its glands to absorb the iron sulfide in the water (that makes the water itself poisonous). It then mineralizes it so it forms iron plates. It then constructs a unique, three-layer build no other gastropod is even close to making. None. ZERO. Not even we can recreate this iron abominable gastropoda. No other snail has this system of defense either. And obviously, our friend is gonna gatekeep the chemosynthesis out of this recipe.
I’m sure lots of other aquatic snails are super jealous of our SFG.
The three layers consist of 2 minerals and some organic matter. The first layer is greigite (Fe3S4), a decently hard material (but organically, extremely hard). This takes most of the outer attacks that can harm the snail. Followed by a middle layer of squishy organic matter that takes the impact of the blows and cushions it down. For the final layer, aragonite (CaCO3), designed to prevent crabs from sticking their nasty claws into the snail and picking it apart splinter by splinter.
Well then how hard is it exactly? Well the formula is so hard that the Us Military is actively conducting research on it because they, nor any other militaries, have figured out how to make something as hard and as well constructed as our Iron Snail. You read that right. This little 5 cm snail is so unbreakable that the US military lost their minds when they learned about it. Not so bad from a snail…right?
According to research, if we put this formula on oil pipes, it’ll make those things near indestructible. Oil spills no more! Icebergs? Pshhhh. It can take a couple hits easily.
But that’s not all. Let’s rewind. It’s called “scaly foot” for a reason.
See those? Those are Scales. Not any kind of organic scale. Those are scales made of iron sulfide. This is used to protect against the venomous, harpoon throwing cone snails. This darn snail is protected on ALL angles, 365 degrees, armored in IRON.
Let’s sum this up: there’s a snail out there that has a shell made of metal, its foot is protected by iron scales, it can withstand pressure that can crush humans into something as flat as a plank of wood, it lives in places with temperatures that will turn us into ash, and it’s baffling the US military.
Now how cool is that?
